


I'm not a pretty girl, that's not what I do

by janie_tangerine



Series: the jaimebrienne spite countdown to season eight [15]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (IN BOTH GOOD AND BAD SENSE), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Brienne of Tarth Has Issues, Bullying, Childhood Trauma, Dresses, Dyslexia, Eventual Fluff, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Femininity, High School, Jaime Lannister Is the Best, Makeup, Minor Tormund Giantsbane/Brienne of Tarth (it's there for literally five seconds but just in case), Not For Cersei Fans I Warned You, Public Humiliation, Romantic Gestures, Self-Acceptance, Self-Esteem Issues, Spitefic, The Author Regrets Nothing, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Tutoring, University, WHICH IS THANKFULLY OVERCOME OR AT LEAST SOME, YES I INVERTED THE TAGS FOR REASONS, fuck beauty standards? indeed, jaime is boyfriend goals TM
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-12-26 01:14:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18272804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: By month four, she knows she’s… well. Calling it crushing on him would be ridiculous — she’s not fourteen anymore, thank fuck, and she wouldn’t go back to it even if they paid her to.Too bad that the not-fourteen-year-old way to say it is that she’s in love with him and in the hopeless kind of way.Well, fuck that. She’s learned to act throughout her life and she’s not ever risking another birthday party accident ever again, she’ll keep on acting and survive it. She got good at it, after all, if Renly never suspected.If she’s lucky, Jaime won’t either, and if he finds out… well. She supposes she’ll just hope that he’ll be cool about it, forget it and they’ll be back to being friends a moment later. But if she’s lucky, she’s never going to have to deal with it.She usually is not lucky, but — she was when she decided to not clam up as usual when it came to Jaime. At least they’re friends, after all.Maybe she will be again.Or: in which Brienne has Issues about her looks with the capital I.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> AAAND welcome to part fifteen of the spiteficcing which I'm posting earlier because tomorrow I'll have no time and it's *long* so it can hold you over until Saturday ;)
> 
> That said, LET'S HAVE OUT OF THE WAY THE ANON HOT TAKE OF THE CENTURY for the day, which was sent to yours truly in the year of the lord *2016*:
> 
> Now, I don't know if anon had a clue that if there is *one* specific wank topic that will make me want to scream to the heavens more than 'brienne deserves jaime' is THIS ONE, but congrats anon & everyone else who in the following years had to remark that she's too masculine to be into guys or to be cheapened by a love story (???) or worst of all that if you said she was into men just for an excuse to ship her and jaime you were making her a disservice: thanks for making me reach levels of spite I didn't even think I had in me. ;)
> 
> In **more serious warnings, DISCLAIMER** : at some point in this there's a fair amount of jokes traded at the expense of *that* specific school of terf-ism/**political lesbianism** according to which you can choose your sexuality/go for women rather than men because women are purer and according to which women being straight is basically societal brainwashing and we should all choose to date women and of whom I've seen enough around to last me for a lifetime. A lot of those jokes also are based on the fact that a bunch of people apparently seem to think that if you don't *look* straight, whatever the hell that means, then you can't actually *be* straight. I absolutely in no way shape or form mean to trade jabs at *actual* bi/lesbian women who are NOT political lesbians/terfs/the likes.
> 
> Also: this entire thing's summary is basically About Brienne's Issues With Her Relationship With Femininity And Beauty Standards Just In Modern AU (but like I didn't really do anything that canon hasn't done in that sense). Now, I realize this is most likely not in line with the current political commentary on that topic in general, but I wasn't meaning to write anything with a social point to it. This is rather more about how I feel *she* would feel about that topic based on her canon book characterization and it's basically vomiting out a LOT of feelings I have on the topic and that I've had for years, so take it for what it is.
> 
> And now that I've dumped on you the longest notes in existence, I'll go for the usual disclaimer before sauntering back downwards in which I inform you that the title is from Ani DiFranco, I own.... _almost_ nothing surely not the characters (but I'll take merit for some parts of the plot for reasons) and yeah, have fun... during the second half of this, I suppose. ;)

At ages six and seven, Brienne Tarth does _not_ , differently from what most people she’ll get to know in the future will assume, hate the color pink.

Actually, she quite likes it. Fine, the old lady living next door who sometimes keeps an eye on her when Dad can’t come get her at school or needs to be out for work keeps on telling her not so subtly that she’d look better in blue or green, but she doesn’t pay her any mind.

 

(She will regret it later.)

 

After all, at age six, she doesn’t really think about how clothes _look on her_. If she likes it, why shouldn’t she wear it?

So: she actually _does_ wear pink t-shirts or trousers at that age. Sometimes even dresses, even if she does notice that most of her classmates tend to laugh when she does, so she tends to not do it too often. She doesn’t know what would they care or what is the problem, but she feels her stomach clench in something deeply unpleasant whenever they do. So, she avoids the dresses.

It also doesn’t take her long to notice that she’s taller than most of her class in the first two years of elementary school and that people don’t go out of their way to talk to her, but it’s not like she minds, she has books to read at home and movies to watch and homework to finish. She goes on with her life, she never asks why sometimes people stare at her and laugh when she turns her back, both girls and boys — it’s not worth it — and if in the end she has better marks than most people in her class, well, it’s a personal satisfaction.

She also knows she doesn’t get invited to birthday parties, but that’s all right, too — she doesn’t overtly care for them and hers is in the summer, so she couldn’t even invite anyone if she wanted. She’s fine spending it with her father.

At age eight, though, things change.

— —

First thing that happens: a new boy arrives in her class, after moving to London from Cornwall. His name is Ronnet Connington, he’s the only one in class who’s as tall as she is and when she walks inside the room and sees him for the first time, Brienne can’t help noticing that he has a pair of really nice blue eyes, a paler, clearer shade of blue than hers, and she likes his red hair, too, but of course she doesn’t dare say anything because _all_ the other girls in class end up flocking to him, too, and while she has no issues with her looks

 

( _not yet_ )

 

she _knows_ she’s not the kind of girl boys call pretty or want to hold hands with.

Still, when a few weeks after school begins he comes up to her and says that in his previous school they were behind in both math and English and he could use some help catching up and he was told she had the best grades, so, he asks, maybe she could give him a hand?, Brienne’s heart is beating at thrice the usual speed when she nods and says yes.

It keeps on beating thrice faster every time she sits down with him either during breaks and catches him up on what he’s missing. For the first time _someone_ seems to value her smarts, at least, and she dares thinking, after the fifth time, that _maybe_ there is one boy in existence who might actually _like_ her. Brienne’s heart flutters in her chest at the thought. She never dared entertaining it. But — _why not_? After all, in all the fairytales she’s always read, the protagonists are usually the girls no one ever looks at but they _do_ find their prince charming after all.

Maybe she could get hers, too?

She still doesn’t dare ask him or tell him that maybe _she_ would like to hold his hand, but every time she looks into his pale, clear blue eyes her pulse beats faster and she feels like smiling, and when he smiles at her her heart beats _even faster_ , and when she asks her father if _maybe_ there’s hope, he says that if he’s nice and he likes spending time with her, well, _why not_ , after all anyone who’d take care to get to know her would notice at once how great of a person she is.

She lets herself believe it.

 

(She will regret it later.)

 

—- —-

A month and a half goes by. She gets Ronnet caught on everything, and fine, it’s at the cost of not actually taking a _break_ in the time they’re supposed to, but she really doesn’t mind. It’s all right, if it means she gets to spend time with him.

So what if during a lesson in which she’s bored out of her mind she doodles both of their names inside a heart in the corner of her notebook? It’s not like anyone ever pays attention to her.

 

(She’s wrong. She hasn’t noticed Edmund Ambrose watching her from the side, and she also doesn’t think about it before leaving the notebook under her desk when she goes to the bathroom during recess, and she also doesn’t notice that it’s not in the exact same position she left it in when she comes back.)

 

Then, two weeks before Halloween, she gets the first birthday party invitation of her life. It’s Ronnet’s, because his birthday is October 31st, so he’s throwing a masked party at his house, and would she like to come? He gives her the card himself, and he winks at her as he does, and she goes red in the face as she accepts.

She can’t believe he actually invited her, and for once her stomach isn’t contorting in half-excitement and half fear, only excitement.

Still, she needs a costume. She also needs a present. Surely Dad can bring her out shopping this week-end, won’t he?

— —

When she asks him, he’s only too happy to oblige — he confesses her that he was getting worried that she wasn’t making any friends, and if this kid is nice then of course they can get him a nice present. Does she know what he’d like already?

Brienne thinks about it — he had mentioned liking board games, so maybe they could get him one.

“Sure,” Dad tells her, “but after we get _your_ costume, how about it?”

She nods enthusiastically as they search for a toy shop that might have both. The first one they visit has nothing she feels like getting, but the second —

A part of her says, _Mrs. Roelle always says that pink doesn’t look so good on you_ as she eyes a perfect replica of the pink dress Ariel had in _The Little Mermaid_. But — it’s _really_ nice, and she did like that movie a lot, and she does like both those shades of pink, and it comes with a red wig, too, and they have it in a size for older girls that _would_ fit her.

She tries it on.

“Oh, it _does_ fit you,” Dad tells her. She looks at herself in the mirror of the changing room.

She _does_ like it a lot.

And who else should like it, anyway? After all, it’s not like she looks like any of the other _pretty_ girls in the room in the first place, so even if her other classmates will hate it, what does she care?

“So — we can get it, then?”

“Of course we can.”

They get the dress.

She also gets him one of those new Star Wars Monopoly editions — he did come to school with a Darth Vader t-shirt a few times, so she knows he likes it, and so what if it costs slightly more than the regular one?

Surely, it’s going to be worth it.

— —

Dad drives her to the party on time. She clutches the present to her chest, smoothing down the skirts of her dress — she hasn’t worn a skirt in so long, it feels weird, but she thinks she likes the feeling. She checks in the car’s mirror that the wig is staying in her place — at least the wavy, red hair is a change from her usual straight blonde — and then she’s off, telling Dad that he can get her at eight. He tells her that he can take her trick or treating later if she wants to, she grins as she tells him of course, she’s always looked forward to it, and knocks on the door as he drives away.

She’s not the first. Ronnet’s mom smiles politely as she walks in and tells her that she _really_ is tall for her age. Brienne thanks her, and then she’s in the living room where half of her class already is — they’re all dressed like some Disney character, too. Ronnet is the only one who’s not — he has a very cool pirate costume and she takes care to tell him as she hands him the present. He thanks her and goes to put it with the others.

“Well,” Edmund says from somewhere on her left, “what a chance that he’s a _pirate_ and you’re a mermaid?”

She blushes at that, but it didn’t sound… _mean_. “Not right now,” she admits. “But — I guess.”

“Imagine that,” Edmund says, and then goes back to talking to Ben and leaves her alone.

She smooths down her skirts again.

— —

The first hour of the party doesn’t go so bad. They play some games, for once the girls in class don’t seem to want to avoid her at all costs, she sips her Coke, everything is fine. Of course, whenever Ronnet even glances at her she thinks she blushes at least half as red as her wig, but it’s not the _bad_ kind of.

That is, until someone suggests playing spin the bottle.

No one disagrees and she’s just thankful that the bottle never lands on her, given that this is the type of where you have to kiss the person the bottle points at.

She just hopes that it keeps on not landing on her until the others get bored of it, but just as soon as she’s thought that, Ronnet, who has just been kissed on the cheek by some girl named Randa with whom she’s never talked once in her life, spins the bottle and it lands on her.

_Oh_.

Suddenly the room falls silent — some of the girls giggle, but Ronnet looks deadly serious as he stares at her. Her eyes meet his, and she can’t help thinking again that _his_ shade of blue is so clear and pretty, she could stare at it for days.

He stands. Since everyone else has until now, she stands, too. They’re of a height.

“Hey,” Edmund says, “I _did_ say you had matching costumes.”

Some of Edmund’s friends laugh, but it’s not the good kind of, she can feel it, and now that Ronnet’s coming closer she notices that there’s something _wrong_ in the way he looks at her.

“So,” he says, “I guess you couldn’t wait for this to happen, could you?”

Her blood runs cold. “… What do you mean?” She asks, her voice not as steady as she’d like.

“Someone told me you _like_ me,” he goes on. “Is it true?”

She shakes her head immediately, her instinct screaming _deny deny deny **deny** before it comes back to bite you_.

“Too late, Tarth,” Edmund says. “I saw your notebook. He did, too.”

Oh.

_Oh_.

She left it one the desk, didn’t she?

She figures she’ll try to get out of this with her head held high. She takes a breath. “So what if I do?”

He scoffs. “Well, sorry to say, but I don’t think I could ever _like_ someone as ugly as you are. And honestly, with _that_ costume? You look even uglier, what were you even thinking? Pink looks like shit on you.”

“And that _wig_ ,” one of the other girls says, and a moment later the entire room bar her is laughing, and she feels her cheeks get hotter and hotter and her eyes burn, but she’s _not_ going to do it in front of him. She tears the wig off, though, because suddenly it’s itching and she can’t bear the thought of wearing it anymore, and she takes another breath.

“All — all right,” she says, her voice tinier than she’d like, hating how it sounds, hating that her tongue feels all constricted and that she can’t find a way to tell him off or some kind of smart comeback, and then everyone is laughing _harder_.

Then he leans down and kisses her cheek, and she about pushes him away, but he moves away before she can do it.

“Here,” he says, “that’s the most you’ll get from me. Satisfied?”

_No_ , she wants to say.

The others are laughing so hard she thinks she’s going to die of embarrassment.

“I want to call home,” she says, desperately trying to hold on to some scrap of dignity.

“Well, the phone’s in the hallway,” he shrugs, and then sits back down.

His parents are out, they left them alone for the moment, so she can’t ask them if it’s a joke or not, but fine. She turns her back on them, walks out of the room.

The phone is indeed in the hallway.

Everyone else keeps on laughing and she hears Edmund’s friends calling her pathetic and such a joke to be made fun of, and her fingers are shaking so hard as she tries to call home that she has to try three times before the call finally goes through.

When Dad answers, she merely asks him if he can come get her _now_ , and she’ll explain it later, and can he bring a change of clothes? He sounds worried as he says yes.

“Nothing pink,” she says, knowing that most of her wardrobe is, but she _must_ have some other color in there. Hopefully. She can’t even look at her dress right now — it seemed so nice until half an hour ago but now she just wants to tear it out and never see it again, and when she realizes it’ll take Dad half an hour to get here, she wonders, _can I be in that room for half an hour with them_?

The answer is no, she doesn’t even have to think twice about it.

She opens the door and goes to wait on the stairs outside the house.

No one comes back to get her or make sure she’s actually _there_.

She hadn’t expected otherwise, after all.

Five minutes later, she bursts out crying, wiping at her eyes with the satin-like fabric of her dress, burying her face inside it, and that’s how her father finds her later — she hasn’t stopped yet, and when he asks her what’s wrong she just bursts out crying all over again and says she’ll tell him at home, and can they please just drive away now, and no, she doesn’t care for trick or treating this year.

She tears away the dress from her in the back of the car — she left her wig at Ronnet’s, she realizes, but who cares. She puts on a pair of jeans and a blue sweater, _thankfully_ it’s not pink.

After they get home, she stuffs the dress inside the trash while she still lets out bursts of tears.

Then, after she’s cried herself out in her father’s arms, has had dinner and feels slightly less like she’s doing to die of embarrassment, she methodically takes out every single pink piece of clothing in her wardrobe, piles it up neatly and tells Dad to give it away to the local parish or wherever they’ll take second-hand clothing for the poor.

“Are you sure?” He asks her, sounding worried. “You liked them.”

“Not anymore,” she says.

She most likely sounds like she’s sure, because he just nods and doesn’t argue with it.

The next morning, when she goes to school, she finds the red wig on her table, with a note saying that she should keep her boring hair because at least it doesn’t make her look like an overripe strawberry.

She stuffs it in the trash, too, and begs her father to change schools regardless of how much work she will have to do to catch up because one day is enough to make her know for sure that she can’t possibly spend _years_ with these people anymore.

He agrees.

She’s just relieved she won’t ever have to look at Ronnet’s face again, nor at his damned pale blue eyes.

— —-

From that moment on, she doesn’t wear pink anymore.

— —

She meets Renly Baratheon on her first day of secondary school, when they’re both twelve.

For the previous years, she had carefully avoided talking to people beyond necessary, _especially_ if they wanted help with homework, and she’s survived just fine. She’s shrugged off most of the comments anyone had about her appearance — by now, she _knows_ she’s ugly, thank you very fucking much. She also knows that her hair looks like dull straw, that her freckles are too dark, that she’s too tall, that her nose is a lost cause especially after she broke it two years ago trying to stop a fight in between people older than her, that her shoulders are too large. She’s heard it in so many variations she could recite it in her sleep. It’s not that they don’t hurt, but after that party… what else could hurt more anyway? That said, it left her with a healthy distrust of people who seem to want to be friends.

Renly Baratheon is _not_ that kind of person. He’s the kind of person who makes friends with _everyone_ in the span of two days. He’s also breathtakingly handsome, with that flowing black hair and those clear, green-blue eyes that seem to change with the weather, his impeccable clothing, his grin that shows off perfect, white pearly teeth, and Brienne can recognize the signs when the day he introduces himself to her _personally_ her stomach clenches on itself and her heartbeat speeds up.

_Why am I such an idiot_?, she wonders as she stares at Renly’s bright smile when he turns it towards other people.

She doesn’t know. She really doesn’t.

— —-

What she knows, though, is that Renly is generally nice to her even if he doesn’t ask for homework nor goes out of his way to involve her in anything, and when after six months later she has to admit to herself that he _hasn’t_ turned out to be some kind of arse yet, she figures that she could do worse than thinking _he_ is really too pretty for this world.

Of course, she’s _never_ going to tell him.

She’s learned better.

— —

She maintains a friendly-ish relationship with him for the next two years or so.

That is, until it happens that she wakes up with blood on her sheets and within the span of her fifteenth year she finds herself so much taller than half of the people she meets that she honestly feels like shit looking down at them all the time. Added to the fact that she’s taken up boxing at the gym because it does not so moderately help her unload a lot of frustration, when she looks at herself in the mirror the first day of the third year of secondary school, she sees muscled shoulders wider than anyone else she knows, men or women alike, and to her frustration her breasts haven’t grown past a miserable A cup.

Given that these days she only sticks to jeans and band t-shirts when it comes to clothing — she’s _not_ making herself a target for more assholes, thank you very much —, when she looks at herself in the mirror she has to sadly admit to herself that the one feminine thing about her is that she has long hair.

She considers cutting it just because she’d look less ridiculous, but — she likes it long. She kind of really doesn’t want to give _that_ up, even if it’s hard to style and no braid ever stays on if she tries to make it.

She ties it up in a bun when going to school and gets ready for a new year of _new_ insults. She wasn’t _this_ tall, before summer started.

— —

She was right, of course. She loses count of all the jokes about how she looks like a man she hears, and when some of the girls suggest her that she could go to the men’s bathroom, she just shrugs and takes it in stride. At this point she has wholly given up on having female friends anyway.

Then it happens that Hyle Hunt asks her out.

Hunt has _never_ once talked to her before, and suddenly he shows up with _flowers_ and leaving nice notes on her desk and telling her that he hadn’t noticed her before but now that she’s so tall and so on he kind of really did, and for a single, blissful moment she wonders, _could it be that he really does like me_? He’s not Renly, of course, but he’s not hard on the eyes either and it’s not as if she _knows_ him, she could get to know him better.

She’s this tempted to tell him yes.

That is, until Renly sits down next to her during recess.

“Listen,” he tells her, “I know we don’t talk and I know you have no reason to trust me, but if I were you, I _wouldn’t_ go on dates with Hunt.”

“… And why wouldn’t you?” She asks, cautiously.

“Because I heard him and his friends talking in the bathroom and he’s asking because they bet money on it.”

“… They did _what_?”

“They have a bet going on. They said he wouldn’t find the guts to actually ask you out _and_ , er, pop your cherry, so to speak. He asked how much money they’d bet on it, and if you say yes _and_ put out and he comes to them with proof, he gets two hundred quid.”

For a moment she wants to decide he’s lying, but he doesn’t _sound_ like he is, and he actually looks kind of disgusted at the prospect, and after all what were the odds that _anyone_ would want to actually date her?

“All right,” she says, sounding as defeated as she feels. “Thank you. That was… very decent of you.”

He sends her a stare. “I suppose it _was_ ,” he agrees, “but — you sound a bit too fine about it.”

“Not the first time anyone would want to stage a public humiliation,” she sighs. “Really. I’m fine. Thank you.”

He looks somewhat _worried_. “Hey, I mean, from what I see you’d deserve way better than that idiot anyway. He’s not even good-looking.”

“… And what would you know about that?” She asks.

And then he _laughs_ , but it’s not mean. “Wait, are you the only person in this school who hasn’t spent half of their time gossiping about the reasons why I would?”

“Why would I mind other people’s business?”

“Man,” he says, “you _really_ are a special snowflake in the good sense. Anyway, long story short, case is that I’m not into girls, _that_ ’s how I know Hunt is nothing special. Also, I’ve seen him in the gym’s changing room. You’re losing zilch.”

At _that_ , Brienne has to laugh, and for once it’s not because she has to hide something else.

“Okay,” she says, “I’m going to tell him to fuck off.” Meanwhile, she’s _really_ glad that she never even considered telling him that _he_ was the person he was thinking about when she touched herself the first time.

Actually, scratch that, she _never_ will.

“Good. That said, I never said I couldn’t do with friends who aren’t waiting on the sidelines to bet on _who_ is my infamous secret boyfriend.”

“Why, you have one?”

“Not in this school,” he winks at her. “Maybe if I decide you’re trustworthy, you’ll learn.”

He winks at her and goes back to his place.

Huh.

Well, if he wants to be friends… why not?

At least, she figures, if she ever told him that she was into him, he’d have said no because he’s not into women in the first place, and he had no other reason to warn her about Hyle unless he meant well, right?

Shit, she can’t be _that_ unlucky, she reasons.

— —

Turns out, Renly hadn’t lied about the bet — she goes into the men’s bathroom at the next break, surprises them discussing it, tells them they’re all assholes and leaves them there. At least Hyle has the decency to not try to talk to her anymore.

Turns out, Renly actually _meant_ it.

Brienne decides, in the next months, that having _friends_ is actually a good thing, and her father about weeps in relief the first time she invites both Renly and the mysterious boyfriend over — his name is Loras, he goes indeed to another school and they’ve known each other since they were ten or something and they always knew they were meant to be. Of course, Loras is breathtakingly handsome — soft chestnut curls, warm brown-gold eyes, pale skin. Sure as _hell_ she’d have had no chances even if Renly wasn’t gay, she decides, and puts her heart at peace. That says, Loras is pretty nice, and he also likes Arthurian legends same as she does, and the three of them hang out fairly often and it’s actually pretty nice, and she decides that she _had_ missed out on human contact until now.

Well.

_Two_ friends are better than nothing, and if the both of them have somehow at some point decided that one day they _will_ set her up with a nice guy they approve of, she won’t stop them.

It’s useless, anyway. If there’s one thing she’s sure of is that there is no damned way she’ll run into one that would be into her in the first place.

— —

When he turns eighteen, Renly asks her if she wants to come with him and Loras for drinks.

Brienne says yes, sure, why not — she’s younger than the both of them, slightly, but it’s not as if _anyone_ ever asks for her ID in bars. Given how tall she is, it’s a given.

She’s not surprised that they went for a bar whose clientele is _not_ straight, but she doesn’t tell them that maybe it’s not the case that _she_ goes in. After all, who’d even hit on her in the first place?

They go inside. They get drinks. It all goes swimmingly until Renly and Loras decide to go dancing a few rounds and she declines — fuck, she’s _not_ dancing at any point whatsoever.

She nurses his drinks.

Then some guy she doesn’t know from Adam drops sitting in front of her.

“You know that the women are all on the other side?” He asks her.

The fuck —

“Uh,” she says, “I’m — I’m here with a couple friends, they invited me. I’m, uh, I’m into guys.”

She nods towards Loras and Renly. The guy nods in understanding. “Right. Sorry for the bother then.”

He leaves and she finishes her drink, figuring that it was a given he’d assume she was just in the wrong place.

Then she goes to get another one —

And then a small hand with golden-tan skin covers her wrist. Brienne turns and finds herself face to face with a young woman that has to have a few years on her, way shorter than she is, with curly brown hair, a generous bosom, dark eyes and pearly white teeth, and she’s grinning up at her.

What —

“I was wondering,” she asks, and wait, is she _flirting_?, “are you here with someone?”

Then she _winks_.

Oh, damn.

Brienne is fairly sure she’s so red in the face she _would_ resemble a ripe strawberry.

“Uh, I’m — no, but a couple friends invited me, those two over there. I’m, I’m really flattered, but —”

She can see the moment the other girl understands, but thankfully she just gives her a pat on the arm and moves her hand back. “No problem,” she says, “I get it. And I’m not in the habit on pressing myself on people who aren’t into me. Arianne, by the way.”

“Brienne,” she says, shaking her hand. Fuck, now that she thinks about it, given that she looks the way she looks and of course she’s wearing her usual jeans and men’s fitted t-shirt and jacket, the moment she walked into a _gay bar_ people would assume she’s not here to hit on _men_. “I’m — fuck, this is so embarrassing, I hadn’t even thought —”

“Hey, it’s okay.” She takes a sip of her drink. “No offense taken. If you’re not into girls then you’re not, even if too bad for me.”

“Too bad for _you_?”

“Hey, if a girl is into _taller_ girls, you’re a pretty good option. If you ever want to give it a try, I’m here pretty often.” She winks at her again and then disappears to the other side of the bar.

Brienne downs her entire drink at once.

She also resolutely _doesn’t_ tell Renly that it ever happened. She figures it’ll just be a one time thing, and if for one moment she had felt a pang of sadness at the fact that for the one time someone hits on her she _really_ couldn’t reciprocate, well, it’s just her luck.

— —

She’s relieved when she’s finally _done_ with secondary school — bar Renly, she about hated everyone in her class, she couldn’t take all the comments about how she should just go to the men’s bathroom so it’d be less lines for the girls’s, she hated every single time when people told her to just _put on some make-up_ or _dress more nicely_ for the yearbook picture and she resolutely went dressed in her usual way, she couldn’t take people telling her to just cut her hair so at least she wouldn’t look like she was _pretending_ to be more girly, she couldn’t take people asking her out as a joke and she couldn’t take having to look at Hyle in the face regularly.

She hopes that when she starts university things might be better. After all, there’s a wider choice of people to hang out with there, and maybe she could finally find _other_ friends. She’s not even going as far as thinking she’ll find something more — as much as sometimes she feels a deep, ugly pang of jealousy watching Loras and Renly looking at each other like they’re the center of the other’s world, she knows she will never get it with anyone else, that she’ll never hold hands with anyone in public, that she certainly won’t share horribly sweet pink milkshakes with _some_ significant other and that if she wants to go beyond fantasies rated PG-13 she’s way better off investing in vibrators than on hitting on men who will never want her. She wants to think she’s made peace with it.

She’s not so sure she has. But then again, she’s going to have to, at some point.

— —

Of course, it doesn’t go as swimmingly as she had hoped for.

People don’t talk to her first, and some glance at her as if they’re weirded out, so she sits at the last row, takes her notes about Medieval history and figures that at least no one makes fun of her out loud.

Then, two weeks into the semester, Renly and Loras show up at her place saying she _has_ to go out, her father tells her that he thinks they’re right.

She sighs and goes out, and when they go to the usual bar she tries to keep to herself.

Until she goes to the bar and a _guy_ sits down next to her.

“Hey,” he tells her, winking from under his red hair and beard, “you free?”

Brienne _knows_ how it goes by now. “I’m a woman,” she sighs.

“Just so you know, I’m bi, not blind. Now, if you’re just into ladies —” Redheaded Guy says, and Brienne is about to drop her drink.

“Uh, actually not,” she says. “I’m — sorry, it’s just, it’s happened that — people took me for one. When here. I came with a couple friends,” she stammers.

“No problem,” Redheaded Guy goes on. “Hey, some of us are into both, I was hoping you’d be, score for me if you’re willing. By the way, I’m Tormund.”

“Brienne,” she says, cautiously. She sort of can’t believe that this is happening, but — who would approach a total stranger in a bar to make fun of them? And — well. _Tormund_ is not _technically_ the kind of guy she usually thinks of when making good use of her vibrator, he’s a bit too burly and sadly the more it goes on the more she realizes that her type is… pretty much _Renly_ , which means she has zero hopes in that sense with _anyone_ , but he’s not… _bad looking_. Certainly she could do a lot worse, and he does have nice, clear blue eyes, too, and he’s smiling sincerely at her and doesn’t seem to mind that she’s taller.

Well.

She doesn’t have to _date_ him or anything, she figures, but if he’s willing, _maybe_ it’d be the damned time she actually scores, for once.

“Nice name,” he says. “So, you never answered my first question.”

“Let’s say I am,” she says, cautiously. Like _hell_ she’s going to tell him she’s technically a virgin, but she _does_ have an imagination. At worst she can say it’s been a long time. “What about that?”

He raises an eyebrow in satisfaction.

“Well, if you can’t wait, there’s a room upstairs for people who want to hook up.”

She had no idea, but good to know.

“Do you have condoms?”

“I’m not some fucking irresponsible arse.”

“Okay,” she says, surprising herself at how sure of herself she feels.

_Maybe_ it’s the right time.

— —

Fifteen minutes later, she’s dead of embarrassment.

Good thing he seems to find their current predicament funny.

“Well,” he says, “I could ask you if you’re willing to compromise, but I wouldn’t want to because it’d be shitty of me.”

“I’m _really_ sorry,” she blurts, putting her shirt back on. “I just — I can’t. I mean, I’d be willing, but — I don’t know if I could do that.”

Turns out, she hadn’t realized that when she fantasized about having sex with other people, it was always with _her_ taking charge. Whoever was the other guy — Renly, Roger Taylor, Robert Redford, Brad Pitt, _whoever_ — she was the one jerking him off, _she_ was the one taking him in his mouth half of the time, _she_ was the one deciding the pace if the guy had his head in between her legs, _she_ was the one on top —

And turns out, Tormund has the exact same preference and just thinking about being underneath another guy in a fairly vulnerable position is enough to make her run for the hills and to make her arousal die down.

“Hey,” he says, “it happens. If people aren’t compatible, they aren’t. Nothing to feel bad about.”

_At least he’s not telling me I’m not womanly enough for that, too_ , she doesn’t say. “Thanks. Still, that was — never mind. Thanks anyway.”

“You shouldn’t be _thanking me_ for hitting on you when I wanted to. But if you want to grab coffee sometime in a totally friendly way, I’m good with it.”

“I — I’d like that,” she answers, not lying.

They do hang out once in a while after then. For being a casual friend, he’s fairly okay.

Still, she can’t believe she found _one_ guy who was into her, and then it turns out that _she couldn’t even let him be on top_.

Fuck.

She knows rationally that there’s nothing _wrong_ about it, it’s not like it’s fucking biological, but right now it just seems the umpteenth thing about her that would make people snicker behind her and ask if she _does_ have anything womanly about her, period, same as they did in high school.

Well.

Now if she ever wants to _get laid_ , not even _have a relationship_ , she has to find a guy who’s actually into _her_ and doesn’t care about not topping during sex.

Something tells her she’d be better off giving it up now and getting a cat the moment she’s economically independent.

— —

Then, two months into the first semester, she decides that she _has_ to make an effort, goes to the students’s union to see if there’s anything she could volunteer for and finds out that they have some free tutoring thing going on.

“If you want,” says the guy in charge, who introduces himself as Sam Tarly, “you can tell us what subjects you’d be okay with tutoring other people in, and if anyone signs up for it, we call you, set an appointment and then you can decide how many times per week you want to do it. Of course, if you have some experience teaching people with learning disorders, that would be great because they go undiagnosed a lot of the time and then show up here not having had a clue until this point.”

“Well,” Brienne tells him, “I don’t know if it qualifies for _experience_ , but at some point I did help out with homework the kid next door who had dyslexia. I was half-assing it, admittedly, but it did work.” Pod was a nice kid, really — he moved a few years ago, but he definitely only had nice things to say to her, and he certainly didn’t think anything bad of her. She misses him sometimes.

“We have _no one_ with that specific skillset,” Sam says, “I’ll note it down. What else?”

Brienne gives him a list and he nods, satisfied, taking her number. “I’ll call you if I have anything for you, all right?”

“Thanks,” she tells him.

She doubts _this_ will be what changes her life, and she hates thinking that it might be another Ronnet — she _knew_ Pod, she doesn’t know whoever they might assign her —, but she’ll have to get over it at some point.

She leaves the office feeling somewhat better for having done it, then looks in distaste at her sweater — it’s the first time in years she wears anything pink, but it was a gift from her aunt from last Christmas and today it was _really_ cold and it was the only one she had around heavy enough. She needs to bring down the heavier ones, she decides, and she’s heading to the mess hall when suddenly two other women who should be at least master’s students move in front of her.

One of them is dark-haired, with tanned skin, dark eyes and wearing a bright red pantsuit, the other is… _well_. Blonde, long hair, green eyes, a generous bosom but not _exceedingly_ so, perfectly put make-up, wearing a green dress that fits her perfectly and shows off her curves. Brienne feels a distinct pang of envy for a moment, then she silences it. Both of them have perfectly manicured nails, she notices.

“… Can I help you?” She asks when neither of them says a thing and just _stares_.

“Oh,” the black-haired one says, “we were just wondering if there was a reason you haven’t joined Salem yet?”

“… Excuse me?”

“Okay,” she goes on after handing Brienne a flyer, “maybe you might be in _the other one_ , but honestly, those people are sell-outs of the worst kind and they don’t get that —”

“Wait a moment,” Brienne says after glancing at the exceedingly pink piece of paper and after reading _something_ about the sacral duty of maternity having to be a woman’s prerogative, _biology not lying_ and _men brainwashing us into thinking we should owe them our vaginas_ she thinks she’s guessed what kind of association this might be, “you think I’m — no.”

“What do you mean, _no_?” The blonde one says, and shit, she’s rarely heard someone’s tone dripping with so much acid in her entire life.

She shoves the flyer back into her hand. “I like men,” she says.

“You _can’t_ ,” Blonde One says.

“… And how would you know?”

“Oh, come on,” she says, “you look like _that_ , you have a pink sweater, and you’re telling me you’re not a sister? No way _you_ like dick.”

“I’m not anyone’s sister and certainly not yours,” Brienne says, “and I don’t appreciate anyone insinuating that I _think_ I like men because I was _brainwashed_ into it. Are you even hearing yourself? Also, since when is wearing pink a statement of whoever I’m attracted to?”

“Well, then you shouldn’t be _appropriating_ it,” Brunette One says.

“… You know what,” she says, “if the _other_ club you mentioned is the _actual_ LGBT support group, I have a couple friends going there and _if_ I was questioning myself I’d definitely go with them. I’m not appropriating shit, I actually hate pink and I’d like to leave now.”

“But darling,” Blonde One says, “looking like _that_ , you really think _men_ would look at you twice? You should try the other side sometimes.” She puts an arm around her friend and Brienne can’t help thinking, _are they bloody faking it_?

“I’m not _trying out_ anything if I don’t think I’d like it,” she says, “and I _know_ men don’t look at me. I made peace with it. I still like dick, thank you very much. Also, you sound like those arses who says you can pick and choose who you like so people could actually choose to be straight, think about it sometimes.”

Then she bypasses them and runs out of the hallway, not minding the fact that they’re calling her _traitor_ or something.

Christ, _what_ now, since she doesn’t look like whatever is the stereotype for straight women, she _has_ to be something else if people don’t assume she’s not a woman or that she hates other women or that she thinks she’s _not like the others_ or whatever?

She needs a drink or ten.

Maybe she’ll accept Renly’s invitation for tonight.

— —

She ditches the pink sweater and opts for a less heavy blue one, it’s not like _that_ damned club isn’t always full of people. Before she goes out, though, she gets a call from Sam.

“Hey,” he tells her, “sorry to bother you so late, I just got home and they warned me now —”

“Sam, it’s eight PM. It’s not _late_. What’s up?”

“They called me from the office and said that someone dyslexic actually wanted tutoring. Would you be up for it?”

“Uh, yes,” she says. “Really, whenever. Did they have any preference?”

“The guy said as soon as possible and they said that if you were fine with it tomorrow morning at ten thirty would be fine, but of course —”

“It’s all right,” she says, “I actually have tomorrow free from classes. Where do I go?”

“Oh, we have a reserved room in the library. Just come here some ten minutes before, we get you there and then whenever the other guy arrives we’re bringing him, too.”

“Okay,” she says, not knowing if she should be wary of the fact that of course she’s paired with a _man_ again. Hopefully if he signed up he’ll just shut up and follow her advice. “See you tomorrow, then.”

“You’re a lifesaver,” Sam tells her.

Well then. At least _that_ is happening.

She leaves. She really needs a drink.

— —

“No way,” Arianne says as Brienne tells her of the two women from before, “that those two are, like, _real_ lesbians.”

Brienne cocks an eyebrow and sips from her drink — it’s not like they’re _friends_ or anything, but they always run into each other when she comes here with Renly and Loras and she’s pretty okay to talk to, and since she’s also kind of unofficially in charge of the women-driven area of the place she’s warned everyone that she’s the token straight friend coming with those other two and therefore saved everyone embarrassment. “Tell me more.”

“Come on,” she says, raising up one hand. Oh. Now that Brienne notices, her nails are _way_ short and actually don’t reach the tip of the finger. “You _really_ think any woman with some self of preservation would want inside her _manicured nails_ as long as you said?”

Brienne tries to _think_ about it, even if it’s not a thing she’d ever consider trying out, and three seconds later she knows she’s blanching.

“Christ,” she says, “no. But like, _why_ would they fake it?”

“… My sweet innocent friend,” Arianne says, “you aren’t aware that some people actually _fake_ it because they can’t admit they like dick?”

“They do _what_ ,” Brienne stammers.

“Fake it. Because women are purer and _better_ and so even if they aren’t into them, _well_ , doesn’t matter, you can absolutely choose to be.”

Brienne downs half of her glass. “And then _I_ am appropriating the fucking color pink,” she groans.

“Please. They’re most likely assholes, let them have sad lives in which no one will ever want to be with them because if they don’t understand they’re fakers first, they will definitely run away at the sight of the manicure. Also, no one who says you should _try it out_ even if you don’t want to deserves your time.”

Brienne nods, not that she hadn’t gotten that far, but it’s kind of nice to have a confirm that those two were being arses.

“Well,” she says, glancing at Loras and Renly dancing to the side, “I’ll go to the bathroom, I think. Thanks for the enlightening conversation.”

“Always glad to expand your horizons, darling. Not in _that_ way unless you want to.”

“Thanks,” she says, “but — believe me, never mind that I don’t really feel the need, I don’t think I could try to expand said horizons with someone… who looks the way I _wish_ I did.” She admits that with a low voice. Arianne nods in understanding, not pressing it, and Brienne heads for the bathroom, feeling like maybe _four_ margaritas were a bad idea. Of course, the line for the girls’s bathroom is _long_ , and damn but she really needs to go.

The line for the guys’s is nonexistent, though.

For a moment she considers it, then decides that fuck it, for once she’s just going to go there. She slips inside and no one stops her, but then again it looks empty. Only one of the doors is closed. She moves inside one of the empty stalls, relieves herself, zips her jeans, walks out breathing in relief at seeing that it’s still empty and quickly washes her hands.

Then she realizes that something’s _wrong_ behind the closed door.

She hadn’t paid attention first, but there’s noise going on behind it, and it’s not someone doing their business. She takes a step closer. It’s muffled, but —

Oh, _shit_. Someone’s crying inside the stall. Definitely a man. And it’s muffled, but it sounds pretty bad.

For a moment, she considers hightailing out. But if whoever this is is _crying inside the damned bathroom_ , maybe they need help, except that she shouldn’t even be here, and —

The guy makes a literally pained noise.

Well, fuck that.

“Hey,” she says, knocking, “I — are you — I mean, do you need help?”

For a moment, she hears nothing. Then the door opens and —

Well, _fuck_.

In front of her there’s a guy who looks like some kind of platonic ideal of _her_ type — just slightly shorter than she is, not as broad as her but with shoulders that are still fairly large, lithe muscles, golden blonde hair (or so it seems in the bathroom’s shitty light), square face, light beard, with a pair of bright, clear green eyes that for a moment seem to glow.

Too bad that he also looks miserable, the green of his eyes is rimmed with red, is face is covered in tears and he also looks _way_ more than tipsy.

“Fuck knows for how many things,” he slurs, “but thanks for asking. Wait,” he squints. “I _didn’t_ go into the women’s bathroom.”

She’s about to actually weep herself when he notices she’s in the wrong place.

“No,” she says, “but there was a line and I really needed it, so _I_ went to the men’s.”

“Huh,” he muses. “Can see why you’d figure no one would notice, but who blames you. Was a fucking long line.”

Okay, well, at least it wasn’t a bad taste remark. And he _didn’t_ ask her if she was a man first thing.

Then he sniffs. “Uh,” he says, “ _fuck_ —”

Then he turns and throws up inside the toilet.

Brienne doesn’t know what is even possessing her here, but she kneels down and raises his head gently, holding it up over the porcelain. He’s sick again, and again, and then he groans something about being fine.

“I think,” she says, “that you could do with some fresh air. Just assessing the situation.”

“Fuck, I might,” he agrees. “I think there’s, like, a yard. Dunno. Jon said people go there to hook up.”

Brienne has no idea who _Jon_ is, but she knows about the yard, she went through it with Tormund, so she lifts him up, puts his arm around her neck and helps him out of the bathroom, thankfully no one’s come in yet, and slips out of the hallway and towards the backdoor. The moment they step out, he lets out a relieved noise. She helps him sit down on the only bench in the small yard and is about to ask him what’s wrong.

Then his head falls on her shoulder.

_What the_ —

“Huh,” the guys says, “you looked less comfortable.”

“… Thank you?” She answers, not quite sure of what she should be saying here.

“Hm,” he goes on, “shit, I knew this was a bad idea.”

“Can I ask what…?”

“Hey, you’ve actually seen me throw up, you _can_ sure as hell ask. Anyway, long story short, I’m having… _issues_ with someone. Or better, saying she treated me like shit would be putting it very mildly but no one needs to know the bloody specifics, so I was miserable, so a friend says I need to get distracted and he and some other, uh, common friends are dragging out the one out of ‘em who’s actually into guys because they think he needs to get laid, and do I want to come with.”

He stops the rant, then shakes his head. “So I went. Might’ve drunk too much.”

“Maybe,” she says, “but it sounds like a rough week.”

“Try rough _years_ ,” he says. “Ah, well. Not like it’s _my_ problem anymore, apparently.”

“Why, new boyfriend?” She asks, figuring it’s the most likely option.

“Nah. ’S more complicated than that. But like, she’s always been into men but now all of a sudden she decided men are The Worst so she’s convinced society fucking brainwashed her and she should’ve realized she was into women years ago but somehow she never did. Because society wanted her to not realize it. So she’s not even talking to guys in the first place unless she has to. Fuck if if I know.”

“… What?”

He shrugs minutely. “Whatever. Sounded like right bullshit, but then again half of what she says is and I’m just a damned idiot for not figuring it out sooner.” He shudders. “Fuck.”

“Hey, are you going to be sick again?”

“No,” he says, in a way smaller voice. “No, it’s fine, I think I don’t have anything left to throw up anymore. Uh, you’re here with a girlfriend or something and I’m taking your time?”

Well, at least he hasn’t assumed she has a girlfriend. “No,” she says. “I was here with the, uh, engaged male friends. But I’m not into girls.”

“Huh,” he says. “Fair enough, that was what _I_ was doin’ here after all. But if you’ve got to be with them —”

“They’re too busy making out like pros,” she says, putting an arm around him before he falls off the bench. “Really, no one’s waiting for me.”

“Guess what, me neither,” he agrees.

“Didn’t you come with friends?”

“Well, _yeah_ , but Jon did find that hook-up and the others left, but I was getting drinks, so I said I’d get back on my own.” He _does_ kind of half-sob on the last word.

Then he starts sobbing again.

_Shit_.

Brienne, who has zero experience in _consoling_ people and has only ever been at the receiving end of it with her father, for a moment feels totally out of her depth. Then she decides that hey, she’s never going to see him again most likely, so she turns in order to make it less awkward and more or less hugs him — if he’s not fine with it, she left him room enough to leave.

Apparently he doesn’t want to. He bursts out crying on her shoulder, again, and she just lets him do it — at some point she puts a hand at the back of his head even if she doesn’t dare touch his hair or anything like that, and keeps it there until he calms down, some.

“Hey,” she says, “maybe you want me to get you a taxi? You don’t look like you’ll go anywhere on your own and you really should sleep it off. Wait, if you’re drunk —”

“I’ve got a roommate,” he slurs. “Actually, two. Whatever. My brother’s not even in town but the other one is and he knows better than getting drunk mid-week. Not a problem.”

“Right then.” She takes out her cellphone, calls a taxi, brings him out to the main entrance of the bar and waits with him until the taxi arrives.

“You remember the address, I suppose?” She asks as she sees it coming.

“Yeah, yeah, ma’am, I do.”

She rolls her eyes. “Good. And whoever’s your ex, don’t give her that much thought. Anyone who has to fake their sexuality to get over a breakup isn’t worth your time.”

“Huh. Wise words. Now I just hope I remember them,” he grins at her, but it’s _not_ mocking. And then —

“Thanks,” he says as the taxi slows down. “Whoever you are, you sure as fuck were more helpful to me in the last half hour than she ever has been in her entire life.”

And then he _kisses her cheek_ and stumbles inside the taxi. It drives away at once and Brienne stands there stunned, her hand going to her cheek, wondering if she has dreamed that entire thing or not.

Most likely not, given that her shirt is wet, but — what the _hell_.

Well.

Fine. She did a good thing and tomorrow she has tutoring. She probably should go home as well. And if for one night a handsome guy actually didn’t sneer at her or laugh at her first thing and actually — let her help or whatever, well, she figures it’s the closest thing to her fairytale endings she used to wish she would get for herself, once upon a time when she still wore pink because she liked it.

— —

The next day, she bothers putting on an actual button-up shirt rather than her usual old band t-shirts — not that it will make the impression better, but she doesn’t want to look… like she _doesn’t care_ , she supposes, even if it’s useless. She finds Sam, he’s only too glad to bring her to her room in the library, says that he’ll bring her student over as soon as he gets there and tells her to wait. She does, her stomach contorting with worry, a part of her whispering over and over _please don’t be like the last time I did this, please don’t_ , until the door opens.

“And here we are,” he says, and ushers in —

Blonde Haired Hot Guy from yesterday.

The moment he notices her (and she can see he’s nursing the hangover) his clear, green eyes go wide, and hers most likely do, too, because Sam does notice.

“Uh, do you know each other?” He asks.

“Sort of,” Brienne says. “It’s fine. How long do we have?”

“The standard session is one hour,” he says, “but no one’s booked after you, today. As long as you like. Have fun!” He says, waving, and then he closes the door.

Brienne looks back at Hot Guy, whose cheeks are kind of slightly flushing now.

“Well,” he says, “this is embarrassing as _hell,”_ he says a moment later.

“Doesn’t have to be,” she cautiously says. “I mean, you were drunk and you needed someone, it’s fine.”

“I — fine,” he says, “it’s just — never mind. Shit, I threw up in front of you and you’re saying it’s all right?”

She shrugs. “Why not? I mean, I wasn’t doing that much better. Also, you look like you’re about to fall down. Take a seat already.”

He does, nodding. “Well, fuck me, obviously I do this after years of stalling and — I guess it is somewhat amusing.”

“After _years_?”

He shrugs. “My father is the kind of person who thinks _my_ kind of issue is laziness. My brother is the only close relative who doesn’t agree but he has no decisional power. My sister isn’t helping either.”

Wait, his _sister_? Now that she looks at him, those eyes and hair are _way_ similar to —

“Wait a moment,” she says, “is your sister the one in the… _Salem_ club or whatever?”

“… Yeah,” he says. “With her right hand-friend, Taena. Why?”

“… Because she might have stopped me yesterday and informed me that I _must_ be into women because of, uh, the way I look, and if I didn’t like them it was society brainwashing me and a lot of nonsense, and a friend at the club informed me that no one with nails like hers could hope of getting laid with another woman.”

He _stares_ at her for a moment.

Then he bursts out laughing so hard that for a moment she thinks someone will come and kick them out, but it’s not the _bad_ kind of, and when he raises his head his eyes are sparkling green and for a moment her heart skips a beat. “That,” he says, “was the most satisfying thing I’ve heard this last month. Please tell me what you did when she told you all of _that_.”

“… I informed them that while I’m aware that men don’t generally find _me_ attractive I still like dick and I’m not interested in people speaking like they approve of conversion therapy.”

He bursts out laughing again, but for some miracle it’s not directed _at_ her.

What is going on here?

“Okay,” he says, “let’s do this from the start. I’m Jaime, I should’ve probably said it _before_ , I’m aware that yesterday I wasn’t at my best, I actually haven’t been for a while but I guess I’m trying to get back on track, and let’s just say that not many people ever tell Cersei no and get away with it.”

“Cersei is —”

“My sister, yes. Which means you have my full admiration, at least. Also, given that yesterday you about saved my hide in there before I could do something stupid, I think that maybe you deserve me actually thanking you.”

“It’s — it’s all right,” she says, smiling tentatively. “I’m Brienne, by the way. And if it consoles you after talking to your sister for five minutes I can’t imagine how living with her for years must be, so condolences.”

He laughs again, moving a few strands of hair away from his eyes. “You know,” he says, “this is wildly surpassing my expectations.”

“… As in?”

“Well, I kind of was expecting someone who’d think I was either being lazy or downright, well, wasting my time here.”

“Why’s that?”

“Usual reaction when I say that I read like shit. There’s a reason why I’m behind with anything that’s not multiple choice tests.”

“If you didn’t do anything about _your problem_ that’s not really surprising, but it doesn’t mean you’re _wasting your time_. That said…” She wonders if she should trust _him_ out of everyone, when she’s known him for not even one hour, but — fuck’s sake, he cried on her and _he kissed her cheek unprompted_ and now he really does look like he’s _not_ disappointed in her being his tutor or whatever.

Fuck it.

For once she can take the leap of faith.

“I was terrified,” she says.

“Of what?”

“Of whoever came through the door, well, having issues with — me, I suppose.”

“… Why would people have issues with you?”

She shrugs. “You've _seen_ me.”

“And so what?” He says. “I like to think I’m not so vapid I judge people on their looks, _if_ that was your problem. And yesterday I couldn’t have cared less.”

“Well, uh, the last time I helped anyone catch up with things, they… kind of abused my trust. Let’s put it like that.”

“Brienne, not to sound pathetic, but I _really_ would like to catch up with my damned reading _and_ my damned finals before it ends up with me having turned thirty before I finish my bachelor’s, so I have literally zero interest in being an arse to whoever might want to help me with it. Especially if they’re the kind of person who’ll hold strangers’s heads while they throw up.”

She can’t help it — it was terrible, but she does laugh a bit at that.

“Well then,” she says, “I see this can turn out better than we both thought.”

He grins back at her, tiredly but _real_ , those green eyes of his looking so bright with mirth, she can’t believe _she_ put it there.

“Oh, I’m _sure_ it might,” he answers, and he sounds like he means it.

She just hopes she put her trust in the right place.

She really does.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Turns out: Jaime Lannister is absolutely _not_ that kind of vapid person. In the next month, he never once makes her feel like shit for her looks, and if _he_ jokes about not waiting in line for the women’s bathroom whenever they go to get coffee, it doesn’t feel mean whatsoever. Hell, she actually finds it hilarious because it’s obvious he’s not saying it with bad intentions and given how they first met, well… it _is_ funny, at least a bit. Also, it takes her three days to realize that questionable humor is pretty much his go-to defense mechanism, and she _can_ recognize one when she sees one, because hasn’t she been the same when it came to just clamming up and pretending she didn’t care about anyone around her? If _that_ is his, she’s not going to question it.

Especially when he makes her laugh even when she knows she shouldn’t.

Also: she kind of never wants to meet his sister again or his father _ever_ , because after a month of tutoring him it’s clear as rain that his self-deprecating remarks at how hopeless he’s at learning things are bullshit and given what he says, it’s obvious that he’s only saying it because _they_ told him first. They do have to try around different methods, but the moment they figure out a couple that _do_ help him focus and he has to take a test that’s not multiple choice, he shows up with a 50% mark when according to him before either he barely passed or didn’t pass, period. And fine, it’s not a _top_ grade, but still a definite improvement.

Brienne doesn’t tell him that she actually spends at least half an hour each day researching more efficient ways to tutor dyslexia that aren’t just what she figured out with Pod years ago, and then at month two he shows up with a 60% in his sociology final, looking like he can’t believe it.

“What,” Brienne tells him, “is that _so_ surprising?”

He shrugs, still staring at the evaluation paper. “Well, _yes_? I’ve never gone as far as this.”

“Well, if now that you’re actually reading the material halfway properly you get _there_ , maybe you should consider that the problem is _not treating learning disorders_ and not whether you’re not smart enough for — whatever it is you think it is.”

He _does_ laugh at that. A bit. “It’s just,” he says, his voice suddenly turning serious in ways it doesn’t often, “my brother’s a damned genius and he’s on his second master’s when he’s _younger_ than I am, my sister always had top marks in everything and I was always there trudging along and barely scraping.” He shrugs. “I mean, when I insisted to actually get a degree they both said I was wasting my time.”

“And what was the alternative, just for science?” She asks, taking the paper and checking the answers to see where his teacher left observations. Maybe if she sees where they thought he might improve they can work from there, next time.

He shrugs. “PA in my father’s company.”

“You _don’t_ sound too enthusiastic.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? I hate that place. I hate PA, you have to smile at people all the time even if you hate them, and everyone thinks you’re there just because you look good. Well, I guess that’s what _they_ think.”

“Well, consider that you’re on the list of future child psychologists, that doesn’t seem like the job that you you want to do.”

“It’s not,” he half-smiles. “But — I always wanted to do that.” He shrugs. “For reasons. But you really don’t get _there_ with barely passing marks.”

“No, you don’t,” she agrees.

“I just figured I’d scrape by, you know.”

“Well, you don’t _have_ to.” She tries to sound encouraging, even if she has little experience with that kind of thing. Renly and Loras never needed encouragement from _her_. “You’re better than scraping by. For that matter, your brother sounds like your only immediate family member who I could want to talk to for more than five seconds without having to tamper down homicidal instincts.”

“ _You_ having homicidal instincts?” Jaime snorts. “That sounds unlikely.”

“Please, I’ve met your sister once and it was bad enough. And your father — seriously, he could have gotten you some serious help the moment you realized and he didn’t, I’m in no hurry to talk to him.”

His smirk dies down as his eyes go a bit wider, and she can’t help thinking it’s a really lovely shade of green. “I’ll try to not introduce the two of you,” he says, his voice suddenly quieter. “And since it’s _your_ merit if I’m actually not scraping by, I’ll treat you to decent lunch instead of poisoning ourselves in the cafeteria.”

“I’ll take it,” she smiles back, slightly, and when her heart beats slightly faster as his fingers brush against hers while he takes back his test —

Well.

She’s not a goddamned idiot.

She _can_ recognize when she sees them the signs of her horrible, terrible habit consisting in falling for people that’ll never want her back like _that_ and to wish for things that for people like _her_ are utterly and completely forbidden.

And she’s also adjusted to locking them away somewhere _she_ can only feel them.

She held out months if not years without telling Renly that she was into him and he never found out and they’re still friends.

Surely she can do it with _him_ , too.

— —

Thing is: she _did_ it with Renly all right, but two months since they meet, and she knows Jaime is really _not_ the same situation. First of all, he doesn’t have the insane amount of _other_ friends Renly has, actually it seems that other than his brother and occasionally the friends he went to the club with, _she_ is the person she hangs out most with. After they find out that they _do_ have a _lot_ of tastes in common, they end up going to the cinema or to a few gigs together, sometimes they meet for tutoring or studying sessions at coffee shops rather than sticking to the times they have the room in the library available. Sometimes they go for drinks together. A few times she goes with him to a few art exhibitions. And — fuck, she _likes_ him.

It’s not just that he’s impossibly handsome and _exactly_ her type, with that lovely, proportioned body, golden hair, that face sculpted like a Greek statue, those bright, clear green eyes, the straight nose and soft lips and the fact that he has that insufferable skill of looking good regardless of _anything_ he wears. That would be her usual cross to bear, being into insufferably attractive guys that wouldn’t look at her like _that_ twice. It’s not even that he’s so far above her when it comes to the money issue, whenever he discusses his family Sunday dinners she feels like it’s a whole other world, because he really doesn’t try to flaunt it nor thinks it makes him better than other people, even if then it shows when from the way he talks, it’s obvious that he couldn’t load a washing machine if he tried.

It’s that… he’s _not_ like anyone else she’s ever ran into, and fuck, that sounds like some corny teenage romance, and she’s made a point to _not_ go there in years. The fact that she did already says a lot about how fucked she is. But — he honestly doesn’t seem to give a damn about how she looks, in the span of two weeks she found talking to him easier than it has ever been with anyone else, he always smirks like he’s won a prize when he makes her laugh with his questionable humor, and — no one else ever felt so _right_ to be with until now. And the way he looks so genuinely pleased when he comes to tutoring telling her he didn’t fuck up the next paper or his eyes brighten in excitement when he figures out where he went wrong at _something_ tends to make _her_ feel excited in return, and she hates hearing him when he berates himself or tells her that it’s her merit more than his own — it’s _not_.

Sometimes, she has the feeling that they did connect also because the _both_ of them are mostly lonely people — fine, she has Renly and Loras and she still hangs out with Tormund once per month at least, and she does talk to Arianne when she accompanies the lovebirds at that club, but that’s the extent of the people she has that she can call friendly, and within a month she knows for sure that Jaime and Tyrion apparently share _one_ best friend in between the two of them, then he has those friends he went with to the club that one time and that’s it, and he doesn’t see them too often because they’re all older people from his fencing team.

She can’t believe that someone like _him_ has about as many friends as _she_ does, but he also doesn’t seem to care about it either way nor to have a busy social life, differently from Cersei, from what she gathers. But he apparently doesn’t, and he seems to suffer from it as much as _she_ does, and she wonders why he doesn’t just go out and talk to people — surely they wouldn’t look _wrong_ at him.

Then, three months into the tutoring, they’re out for drinks and he’s had a couple, and he smirks at her with those damned green eyes of his, and —

“You know,” he says, “my brother says that you finally put the status quo back as it should be.”

“The status quo?”

“Well,” he says, “Bronn was _his_ best friend first, but then he kind of was mine too by default because I really am not around anyone else that’s not related to me as much, you know? So he was always joking that I had to steal his thunder, but now that you showed up into the picture apparently I finally stopped mooching off _his_ friendships.”

“Lannister, is that a very roundabout way to tell me that I’m your bestie now?”

He laughs, genuinely, his eyes shining so bright in the pub’s dim lights she thinks she’ll be blinded.

“And what if you are?”

She smirks back, hoping that it doesn’t show that her heart is beating wildly and that she hates knowing how this particular script plays. “Then you’re in luck,” she says, “because I love Renly but I don’t think I’m _his_ bestie or anything, that’s Loras. Even if they’re together. I could do way worse than you.”

“Nice,” he says, “should we get us matching heart necklaces?”

“Like hell,” she replies, “but if you want to make me a bracelet I could consider it.”

He laughs so hard he almost cries.

Brienne doesn’t usually make _anyone_ laugh.

It feels nice that she _does_ , once in a while. And if it’s him —

Well, what if she’s a bit proud that she can make _him_ smile for real?

It’s not like she has a chance with him or anything. She just has to hold on six months until it inevitably goes away and she can look at him without feeling like her heart will burst or without imagining how it would feel to reach out and touch his face and kiss him and —

Yeah.

She’s _not_ going there.

It was embarrassing enough with Renly, she’s _not_ going to potentially jeopardize things especially with someone who as far as she knows, is definitely into _women_. Fine, it’s _kind_ of strange he doesn’t have anyone on the side given… well, _everything_ , but she also had a feeling that he and his sister have _issues_ in between them, if she has understood right what he said when he was drunk that first evening. Not that she ever asked him — it’s his business, not hers, and he’ll share if he wants to. But still, he does seem to not be interested in anyone, which is fair, she decides. When he inevitably finds a girlfriend who’s as good-looking as he is, she’ll be there and be supportive because that’s what _she_ does, isn’t it?

Patience if no one is ever going to be _her_ supportive friend, in that sense.

Anyway.

By month four, she knows she’s… well. Calling it _crushing_ on him would be ridiculous — she’s not fourteen anymore, thank fuck, and she wouldn’t go back to it even if they paid her to.

Too bad that the not-fourteen-year-old way to say it is that she’s in love with him and in the hopeless kind of way.

Well, fuck that. She’s learned to act throughout her life and she’s _not_ ever risking another birthday party accident ever again, she’ll keep on acting and survive it. She got good at it, after all, if Renly never suspected.

If she’s lucky, Jaime won’t either, and if he finds out… well. She supposes she’ll just hope that he’ll be cool about it, forget it and they’ll be back to being friends a moment later. But if she’s lucky, she’s _never_ going to have to deal with it.

She usually is _not_ lucky, but — she was when she decided to _not_ clam up as usual when it came to Jaime. At least they’re friends, after all.

Maybe she _will_ be again.

Maybe.

— —

Of course, that’s _hoping_.

— —-

She knows something is wrong when Jaime shows up at the uni’s cafeteria for their post-finals appointment looking like shit. They were supposed to meet so they could both celebrate that the semester was over and have a look at his grades, and then she had figured they could catch a movie or something.

Except that then he falls down on the seat opposite her and — his shirt is buttoned wrong, his hair is disheveled, his eyes are red-rimmed and it’s obvious he hasn’t slept at all tonight.

“What’s wrong?” She asks the moment he looks up at her.

“I guess it’s obvious, isn’t it?” He’s trying to joke, but it doesn’t really work.

“You look like you haven’t slept in three days,” she presses. “Really, can I do anything?”

“It’s already a lot that you noticed.” He shakes his head, then he lets his finals’ evaluations on the table.

She takes them and _almost_ whistles.

“For — the lowest one has a 63% mark,” she tells him. “It can’t be because of _these_ , right?”

“Sort of,” he shrugs. “I mean, I got them yesterday except for one, Cersei found them and — well, both her main concern and my father’s was asking me how I cheated.”

“What — you _didn’t_ ,” Brienne immediately says.

“‘Course I didn’t, but apparently it’s impossible that I might actually have gotten there on my own.” His voice takes a bitter tinge for a moment. “Then — well. There were arguments, I guess. I couldn’t sleep for the entire night, we argued again before I came here and — yeah. Never mind. My father is still insisting that I should leave everything for his PA, but —”

“Do you want to?” Brienne interrupts him.

“Hell, no,” he immediately says.

“Then _don’t_. Fuck’s sake, you worked your ass off these months, you’ll be back on track within the year if you go on like this, if the 69% here says anything it’s that you’re _good_ at your field, and it’s not thanks to them.”

“You know,” he half-smiles, tiredly but _real_ , “your pep talks are a thing of beauty.”

“I try,” she deadpans, taking a sip of her coffee. “Anyway, you _know_ that these are excellent marks, don’t you?”

“I do,” he says. “I just can’t believe I got there — never mind. Thanks, you’re a real gem. In between dragging people out of their academical stagnation and making sure they don’t die while throwing up in public bathrooms, I don’t know how you aren’t up for sainthood yet.”

She knows she’s blushing. She tries to keep it under control. “Well, _someone_ thinks that, at least. I’ll just check the suggestions so maybe next time we can start from here?”

“Knock yourself out.” Her heart skips a beat at how he smirks for that one split moment —

“How cute,” a voice she had hoped to _never_ hear again says from her right side.

Brienne puts away the finals and looks up at Cersei Lannister, who is standing near there with her usual friend from last time and a few other girls with their hands full of flyers.

The flyers are all _bright_ pink. Both Cersei and Taena have perfectly manicured bright pink nails and at least one pink piece of clothing on — Cersei the tailored shirt, Taena the jeans. All the other girls are also similarly dressed and Brienne _really_ wishes they’d leave already.

“Cersei,” Jaime groans, “I thought I was clear enough this morning.”

“I don’t think I heard you,” she replies, her tone so fake-sweet that Brienne feels like it has singlehandedly shortened her temper without even taking into account what she just said. “And since you won’t discuss this _at home_ , then it’s going to be different measures.”

“For — I already told you I’m _not_ going in PA, I don’t care how much they need someone handling things. I never wanted it. I don’t _care_ about it.”

“Oh, because wasting your time after other people’s brats will be that much better?” She shrugs. “And you know that on your own you’d never get anywhere. This is like that time poor Arthur spent half of his time explaining you stuff he already knew and you managed for that one year. The moment she gets tired of trailing after you like a lovesick puppy and grows some self-esteem, you’re going to be back at square one.”

Brienne can see that Jaime is about to answer.

But she heard it well enough.

“Excuse me,” she says, her voice sounding harder than she thought it could become, “what have you just _said_?”

Cersei turns to look at her, with such a patronizing stare that Brienne’s already tethering-on-the-edge temper takes another very, very bad blow. “Dear, that’s not _your_ problem. And the moment you realize that you’d be much better off joining us instead of aiming higher than you ever could your life will become so much better. Anyway, the problem is _him_ , not —”

“ _Aiming higher_?” Brienne wheezes.

“Well,” Taena says, her hand going around Cersei’s elbow, “it’s just unfortunate that instead of seeing how much better off you’d be dating girls instead that wasting time after guys who don’t deserve it you’re here doing his homework just because you’re _that_ starved for a good-looking guy to glance your way that you won’t notice they’re out of your league anyway. What, you really think you’ve got a chance?” Cersei does smile in agreement at that. She glances at Jaime. He looks like he did that first night in the club.

 _No_ , Brienne wants to say, _of course I never thought that_. She opens her mouth to tell her that it’s not the case, she’s seeing things and she really should leave, and her dating life is not her fucking business.

“Oh,” Cersei says instead, “darling, you know you’re right, but I guess people like her really need life to hit them in the face before they realize how the world works. I mean, she’s obviously the kind of person who looked like _that_ in high school, too, and wanted the hot guy to notice them _that_ much. She’ll see reason soon —”

“Fuck you,” Brienne blurts, standing up full height.

“ _Excuse you_?” Cersei snaps back, but for a moment she flinches and Brienne is just — she’s done. She’s _done_ , she was done the moment she heard that comment about _high school_ , and for a moment she was back in Ronnet’s living room —

 

“ _I guess you couldn’t wait for this to happen, could you?”_

 

“No,” she goes on, feeling her blood boiling even if she’s speaking so calmly, she’s almost surprised. “Excuse _you_. Ex-fucking-scuse _you_ , not me. Who the hell do you think you are? No, _who the hell do you think you are_? You can’t just walk up to people, treat them like shit when you don’t even know them and think you can get away with it because you’re — _good looking_ , damn it, and you know what? I’m fucking tired.”

“Oh, _you_ are tired? Of what, may I ask? Of trailing after guys who’ll never want you when —”

 

" _Someone told me you like me. Is it true?”_

 

“Oh, go fuck yourself already!” She shouts, and she surprises herself by how _loud_ it was — the entire cafeteria just went silent, and she’s never done this, she’s never screamed this much, but she’s tired, she’s _so fucking tired_ , and she can’t take this nonsense anymore. “So fucking _what_? So fucking _what_ if I happen to be into good looking guys that will never look my way? Do you think I don’t _know_? Do you think I haven’t gone through _that_ all my damned life since long before you could even imagine? Oh, but I’m sure that never happens to _you_ , does it? No, men will look at _you_ and at your friends at every corner because you’re _pretty_ and feminine and whatever the hell it is you are, no one will ever decide that you have to be a _man_ or that you _have_ to be into women just by fucking looking. And then of course you go around pretending you’ve realized it wasn’t your call and saying you can fucking _choose_ who you’re attracted to. Well, guess what, maybe _you_ can, but most of us damn well _can’t_!”

 

_“Too late, Tarth. I saw your notebook. He did, too.”_

 

“I never asked to be born looking like _this_ ,” she goes on, gesturing at herself. “Did I ask for my damned height or shoulders or fucking flat chest? Did I ask for people to wonder why I don’t just cut my hair already and embrace how much I’m _not_ a proper looking woman and instead I keep it long because I _hate_ how I look with short hair even more than I hate the way I look already, just for you and people like you to laugh behind my back? Bloody hell, I never asked to be born like this and _being into guys_ , but guess fucking what?”

 

_“So what if I do?”_

 

“Guess what, last I checked I was a woman and last I checked I was into _men_ , not other women, and I can’t fucking change it with a snap of my fingers, never mind that — Christ, do you _really_ think that if I could do that then I couldn’t wait to date someone who looks the way I fucking _wish_ I did every other damned day? And don’t you think I wouldn’t do it at least so I wouldn’t have to deal with people deciding I’m _too ugly_ for them, their friends, their relatives and whatever the fuck else?”

 

_“Well, sorry to say, but I don’t think I could ever like someone as ugly as you are. And honestly, with that costume? You look even uglier, what were you even thinking? Pink looks like shit on you.”_

 

“Let me guess, you never had to throw away your clothes because if you wore _that_ one color people would laugh at you, huh? You never had people humiliating you in public because you _dared_ have a crush on them? You _never_ had people asking you out on a bet just to see if you were stupid enough to fall for it and everyone laughing because of course if you’re the _ugly_ girl in class who _looks like a man_ then she doesn’t have feelings and they don’t get hurt, huh? Because she _looks like a man_ and what, _men don’t have feelings_? Well, fuck you sideways, fuck your standards, fuck your goddamned assumptions and you know what, fuck your dumb high school rhetoric. Because fine, _fine_ , yes, I’m actually into him, but you know what? I know I’ve got no chances with him, I’ve known since I was _eight_ that I didn’t have chances with _handsome_ guys, and I wasn’t even planning on ever telling him and I was going to wait for it to go away, but I’m not so pathetic that I’d trail after anyone who’d look my way for _anything_. And maybe handsome guys are out of my reach same as fucking wearing dresses or looking in the mirror and _liking_ what I see, and I’m pathetic for wanting things I know I can’t have, but it doesn’t mean I don’t have a right to look or that I should damn _settle_ for being with people _I’m not even attracted to_ and which from what I see sure as hell wouldn’t be attracted to _me_.” She takes a breath, feeling like she’s just ran a marathon, and given that she about _shouted_ that entire rant, maybe she should lower her voice — but she can’t.

Fuck, she really can’t.

“And for that matter, _he_ never tried to cheat once while tutoring, _I_ never did his goddamned _homework_ as you call it, we’re friends and that’s it, and the moment he realized how to get over his _one_ fucking problem that apparently neither you nor your father could be bothered to give him a hand with, he’s done everything on his own. He doesn’t need me to get good grades and I’m sure that if we stopped tutoring today he’d manage just fine without me. Sure as hell neither of us needs you around making things miserable. Now, can you just fucking leave already? Because the more I look at your face the more you’re making me re-evaluate my own damned looks. I mean, I fucking hate them, but at least they came with a better personality than yours. Grow the fuck up already, you were done with high school long before I was. And I swear to — if _any_ of you tries to explain me how much I’m lying to myself when it comes to _who the hell I’m attracted to_ , I’m not answering for myself. Fucking thank you,” she spits, and for a moment she feels completely hollowed out.

Except that _the entire room_ has fallen silent — she can only hear her own breathing as her chest goes up and down, her cheeks flaming red, her hands sweating, and Cersei and her whole entourage are looking at her as if they’re petrified, and that’s when she realizes that —

Fuck.

 _Fuck_.

She did admit she was into Jaime in that entire tirade, and she didn’t want to, and —

“Brienne?”

She turns to her other side, where Jaime has just stood up, and has reached with a hand on her arm, and is looking at her…

Wait.

He’s not angry.

“Yes?” She whispers, her throat hurting for how much she screamed.

“Never mind the whole lot of things I really need an explanation about that you just listed,” he goes on, and wait, suddenly he looks… _hopeful_? What the hell? “Have I heard wrong or at some point you have implied that among the things _you want but know you can never have_ there would be… me actually reciprocating your feelings?”

She feels so tired she could faint, but she figures she owes him that answer.

“Yes,” she breathes, barely audible. “Yes, but — please, just forget it. I didn’t want to make things awkward and I’ve pretended since month two, there’s no reason for —”

He shakes his head… but he’s _smiling_?

“I can’t forget it,” he says, showing those pearly white teeth of his. “Because case is, you’re wildly wrong on at least _one_ of your assumptions about the things _you can never have_.”

“Jaime, you don’t have to —” She starts, suddenly feeling like she’s in Ronnet’s room again and like she shrunk to a third of her size, looking into bright clear eyes whose shade she _knows_ she’ll remember forever, wearing that pink dress that everyone thought was ugly, and she can’t do this in public, she can’t, she can’t get the inevitable gentle but firm rejection he’s certainly going to give her —

“ _Case is_ ,” he interrupts her, “I realized that I’ve been into you at least since you let me crash at your place that time we went to the _Evil Dead_ marathon and your father ambushed me outside the bathroom and told me that he was beyond glad you were bringing _people_ home but that if I turned out being like your elementary school friends he’d end me. He hadn’t elaborated, but I figured out some. I swear I’m _not_ joking and I wasn’t really going to tell you because I thought you weren’t interested, but —”

“You — Jaime, shit, I’ve been into you since I opened that bathroom door,” she blurts, taking _another_ leap of faith and not caring that she’s in front of the entire cafeteria, a part of her wildly saying _please don’t end like the last time don’tdon’t **don’t**_ , and then he grins so bright she’s almost blinded and his hands are on her face a moment later and his mouth is on hers and —

Oh.

 _Oh_.

For a moment, her blood goes cold as she wonders, _will it be a fluke, will he move back and say that I shouldn’t have fallen for it, but he wouldn’t, would he —_

But then he pulls her head down at a better angle and kisses her _harder_.

It’s _not_ her first kiss — she _did_ kiss Tormund back in the day, before that disaster of a failed hook up, and it wasn’t bad, but _this_ —

This is _beyond_ better — it feels entirely different, Jaime’s mouth is warm and soft and his tongue is searching for hers as his lips move against hers, and as she kisses him back, her hands going tentatively at the back of his head, and then he moans a little into her mouth and _wait_ , did he just —

It happens again, and suddenly she feels like fainting for entirely different reasons, and when she moves back and starts taking fast, deep breaths of air and meets his eyes again, he looks _absolutely_ sure of what he’s doing, and maybe a bit smug, but not _mocking_ , and oh, she can’t believe _he kissed her in front of everyone_ , and his fingers are drawing circles on her cheeks as her own slowly reach up for his neck —

“Too bad we didn’t figure it out before, but I guess that since it’s the end of the semester we can use the break to make up for lost time, can’t we?”

She nods, feeling her throat getting so tight she could barely speak. Well, admittedly _she can’t fucking speak,_ given how much it hurts. “Whenever you like,” she replies, as lame as it sounds, but — she thinks her brain has just gone into short circuit.

She turns left and — well. Cersei and Taena look like they just swallowed ten lemons — Cersei _more_ , admittedly, the other girls with them look like they _really_ want to flee the scene and Brienne is _really_ glad that her hands are grasping to Jaime’s sides fairly strongly, because she needs to hold on to _something_ given how much Cersei’s glaring at her.

“Why,” Jaime smiles, looking so pleased with how this situation is evolving that Brienne can barely conceive it, “I didn’t think I’d have to thank you for trying to convince me to come to PA again, but apparently I do.”

“ _Thank me_?” She hisses.

“Sure. If you hadn’t shown up we’d be still here being oblivious. Thanks, it’s about the first thing you managed to do for me in your entire life at this point. So,” he says, looking back at Brienne, moving a hand downwards and holding it out, “fancy getting to my dorm room and _talk this out_?”

“You know what,” she says, her hand slipping down inside his, and oh, it feels so _right_ her hand is going to burst. “Yeah. Yeah, I absolutely _fancy_ that.”

“Great,” he grins back at her, and a moment later he’s dragging her upstairs while Cersei gapes at them.

Brienne thinks she’s going to faint, but as she grasps at Jaime’s fingers, she decides that if she does, well, it _totally_ would be worth it.

— —

By the time they _do_ get to his dorm room, she has adrenaline flooding through her veins and her head is pounding and she’s not so sure she’s _not_ going to faint. Jaime still looks like he’s absolutely overjoyed at how the situation has turned, which looks — too good. _Too damned good_ , and she can barely believe it, but —

“Do you need some water?” He asks, not too unkindly, as she falls down on his bed.

“Yes,” she croaks, and downs it at once when she’s handed the glass. “Wow. I — this is so —”

“You’re _not_ going to freak out on me now after what went on down there, are you?”

“I don’t know,” she admits. “I mean, I — I didn’t even know I’d say all of that, but once I started I just couldn’t _stop_ , and… you _really_ …?”

His face turns serious at once, more than she’s ever seen him in her entire life, and then his hand falls down on hers. “Let’s just have it out of the way,” he says. “I’m _absolutely_ meaning it, I _really_ have been into you for a while and I would have never done such a thing just to make fun of you.”

“I know,” she says, “I know _you_ wouldn’t have. It’s just — well. I think you gathered.”

“I gathered,” he says, “but I’d rather hear it from you.”

She’s never _told_ anyone. She’s always kept it for herself, because who’d hear it without thinking she was being ridiculous and overreacting or without assuming that it’d have never happened to her if she had just the good sense to keep her dumb crush hidden?

But — he’s looking at her like he means it, his hand holding hers the way people do in movies all the time even if it’s not small and smooth and her nails aren’t manicured.

She opens her mouth and tells him, the entire story pouring out of her — the dress, the party, the tutoring, the notebook, _everything_ , but before he can say anything she’s told him about the bet, too, not quite looking at him because if she does she’ll just lose the drive, and when she’s done she feels completely drained. His hand is still clutching hers, though, and she finds it in herself to look up at him after breathing in a few times.

She doesn’t know what she had expected.

Sure as hell not that he’d look _completely_ livid.

She’s about to ask —

“Do you have names and surnames of all those idiots?” He asks, his voice _not_ sounding amused whatsoever.

“I — remember them, but why?”

“Good. Please share and I’m personally finding them and breaking their nose.”

“ _What_?”

A moment later his hand is on her face and he’s moved _closer_ —

“Not even what they’d deserve, but — well, fine, I _do_ get why you’d think you’d have no chances.”

“I —”

“Listen to me for a moment. All those people were pieces of shit, _you_ deserved nothing of the kind, anyone who’d ever do that to you after talking to _you_ for thirty damned seconds has a reserved place in special hell and as far as I’m concerned, I could have just been into you because you’re just — the goddamned _nicest_ person I know, and for that matter I could have known just because you went and showed up like the knight in shining armor I didn’t deserve at that club, but just so you know, I’ve been beating myself up about how I shouldn’t stare too much into your frankly _astonishing_ eyes lest I give myself out for months.”

“You did _what_?”

“Also, some of us _do_ like tall girls,” he goes on, his hand going to her hip. “If you add that some of us _do_ like this, too,” he adds, squeezing the muscle on her forearm, “and _that_ ,” he nods towards her back, and fuck, she knows she’s blushing, but she can’t damn stop, “and generally the fact that if I think about a whole lot of things I’d like to do with you I have to take a couple cold showers after, I can safely say that your previous classmates were all fucking blind, as far as I’m concerned.”

She swallows, her hands going to his hips. “And what it is that you want to _do with me_?”

She imagines that he’s going to tell her what Tormund had — that he wants to take her against the bed or see if he can hold her down and kiss her into the mattress, and with Tormund she _couldn’t_ have, but — but Jaime is different, maybe she _could_ make it, maybe she _could_ make an exception, she does trust him —

“ _Well_ ,” he clears his throat, “the last time such a thing happened, I was definitely picturing you holding me down against the bed, not too much but enough that I’d _feel_ it, for — wait, what’s so _funny_ about this?”

He can’t know.

He can’t know, so he’s looking absolutely flabbergasted as Brienne breaks down in hysterical laughter, because — oh fuck, he just said — _he just said_ —

“Hey, is it so funny? Some of us also —”

“No, no,” she says, wiping at her eyes, “but — I haven’t told you — there was one time that I almost, you know, did it. With this guy who hit on me at that club.”

“And you didn’t? Was he a creep or —”

“Nothing of the sort,” she wheezes. “But we didn’t work out because _he_ wanted to hold me down against the bed. And I wanted the exact contrary.”

Jaime _stares_ at her, then he also breaks down in laughter, same as she had, finally _getting_ it.

“Woah,” he wheezes, “so you’re telling me that —”

“I’m telling you that while I have no — _technical experience_ , for reasons I’m fairly sure you can guess… I _have_ thought about holding you down against the bed, maybe,” she blurts, trying to hold eye contact with him, and the way he grins at her a moment later should be downright _illegal_ as he moves closer to her and kicks off his shoes.

“Well then,” he grins, “if you’re amenable to make up for lost time right now, I think I’m _more_ than interested.” He grabs her hand, unceremoniously putting it on his crotch.

When she feels how hard he is, she almost faints, but —

But she’d be a downright idiot if she would _now_ , right?

“Well then,” she tentatively grins back, “I’ve been waiting for the right guy for years. Guess it’s time?”

“Fuck, _yes_ ,” he groans, and a moment later they’re kissing again and they’re losing clothes and he’s grabbed a condom from his nightstand and she _is_ holding him down against the mattress, kissing him over and over, his wrists under her hands.

Thing is — she had no idea of what to expect from such a situation _in real life_ because she’s never gone beyond fantasies, but: fantasies had nothing on it. Fine, it’s not exactly _smooth_ because at some point their legs clash and they have to break it because they both end up laughing hysterically, but then she presses his wrists down against the mattress as she leans down to kiss him and he moans into her mouth, his tongue circling hers, and fuck but she doesn’t think she can stop now. At some point she has to move her hands away to open her shirt and take off her meager sports bra, and she doesn’t have time to feel bad about not having _nice_ underwear because he looks _mighty_ interested as he looks at what little her chest has to offer.

He also hasn’t taken off any of his clothes, but then —

“Well,” he says, “never said that in any of _my_ own fantasies you weren’t taking my clothes off.”

“Was I,” she breathes, kicking off her jeans, too, before moving back on top of him and slowly undoing the buttons on his own shirt, uncovering a smooth expanse of slightly tanned skin with golden blond hair going straight to his crotch — she also undoes his jeans and throws them alongside hers, and when she finally _sees_ how hard he is without having to guess it through two layers of clothing she almost faints, again. Shit. Shit, and it was for _her_ —

“You know,” he smirks, still not moving, “no one said you can’t touch, either.”

Jesus. Jesus, all the times she’s thought about jerking him off and now —

She has a feeling her own underwear will be soaked the moment she takes it off.

But for now she decides not to lest she really faints when it’s _really not the fucking right moment_ , so she grins back shakily, grabs his wrists so that she can hold them against the headboard with one hand only and moves over him so that she can actually, well, _touch_ , and when he groans and tells her that she can also be _not_ so delicate she decides that maybe giving him shallow, light strokes wasn’t going to work, so she tries to do it more strongly and without worrying about it, and fuck, he gets _harder_ as she does, and her hand gets wetter, and the moment she runs her thumb along the slit he almost arches up against her hard enough to make her lose the grip on his hands, and he’s saying her name all over again, and —

Oh, _fuck it_.

She stops before he’s coming, then puts the condom on him — at least all the movies she saw _definitely_ taught her right — and before he can ask her what’s gotten over her she has thrown her panties to the side, slid right on his dick and slammed his wrists against the mattress again.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Jaime says, as she starts riding him as slow as she can manage, figuring she should get adjusted, but she was so wet she barely even felt him and no vibrator measures up to the real thing, she decides, not when he’s looking up at her like she’s giving him everything he might have ever wished for and _fuck_ he’s inside her and his ankles are around her knees and he’s thrusting inside her following _her_ cues which he obviously has more experience with, but fuck if it _doesn’t_ matter right now — she leans down and kisses him into the pillow as her hips slam down and she feels it the moment he comes inside her as he groans her name into her mouth, and she clenches around him again and _again_ and a moment later she’s not thinking anything else anymore because she can just process how good it feels and maybe they both came in the span of ten minutes but _fuck_ , for a first time it wildly beat any other fantasy she might have had, and she tells him after she drops on the bed to his side, taking deep breaths and wondering if she hasn’t dreamed everything.

“Nice,” he says, “but I don’t think I’m done yet.” He’s grinning as he nods towards her crotch, and — she opens her legs tentatively as he leans back on the pillow, and _oh fuck does he want her to sit on him_ , and she does, tentatively, her hands grasping at his wrists again as he smiles again before his tongue touches her wet, warm flesh right where it counts, licking at her clit and finding the opening, and then he about buries his face in between her legs and she’s moaning his name over and over, and she tells him very vocally that she couldn’t have imagined it going _better_ , and he moves just enough to tell her that he has nothing to do this afternoon and he’s game for anything she might want —

Well.

They spend the afternoon ruining his bedsheets, and she enjoys every single, damn second of it, and so does he.

— —

Thing is: the next month goes away as if in some kind of dream. Fine, Cersei _does_ glare at them from the corners of hallways whenever they’re in her line of sight, but — she can’t believe she’s with a guy she can hold hands with whenever she wants, who _will_ kiss her in public on her classroom’s door before heading for his and who’ll let her do the same in return, who about punched in the face the only person that ever tried to ask him what he found in her when seeing them kissing and with whom she’s still _friends_ — that hasn’t changed. It’s just… become _better_ , she decides.

Also, he’s made a point of keeping the lights on every single time they had sex, and she’s so damn grateful for it she could weep, but she doesn’t tell him that. She doesn’t think she needs to.

That is, until her birthday rolls by, or better, is in two days, and he shows up at her place looking… halfway nervous. Like he’s not _so_ sure of what he’s about to do, and for a moment she thinks he has reconsidered it, but when she asks if anything’s wrong, he shakes his head.

He sits down on the bed instead. “Okay, listen,” he says, “two days ago I had this grand idea for your birthday present and I went for it and then I realized it might have looked like I was imposing or pushing something that you didn’t want on you, so — I’m going to tell you now because I’m still in time to cancel everything and you can chalk it up to the fact that I don’t think before I act, all right?”

“All — all right,” she says, tentatively, “but it’s not like you _ever_ imposed anything on me.”

“I know, but — okay, listen, with the premise that I think there’s nothing wrong with you _now_ and that I was into you from the get go and as far as I’m concerned you could go around dressed in fucking camo uniforms and I’d still want to french you like there’s no tomorrow, but — that speech you gave Cersei.”

“Oh. _That_ one. Yes?”

“While I’m beyond grateful you did because it clued me in, I just — can’t stop thinking about it, but not in a good way. I mean, a lot of it was about how you can’t wear whatever because you’d look ridiculous or whatever the fuck it is, and there was that part about looking at yourself in the mirror that will give me nightmares for ages because you couldn’t be more wrong, but — I just want to know one thing. Do you _want_ to… do that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Wear dresses, put your hair down and put on some make-up and so on. I mean, I _did_ gather you wanted to, but —”

“That’s not the point,” she replies quietly. “I mean, maybe I want to. Maybe I liked pink dresses once upon a time. But — come on. No way I could. I’ve had enough people laughing at it for a lifetime. But why?”

The way he smiles then is… way shakier than usual. Then he hands her a few receipts. “Because I might be in disagreement.”

She takes the receipts and almost lets them fall to the ground.

“You haven’t booked me an appointment at _Oberyn Martell’_ s,” she blurts. It’s — the most exclusive damn beauty salon this side of London, and it has the longest waiting list in existence, and they’re famous for doing everything from your hair to your make-up, and _just_ a cut costs like three of her father’s paychecks put together.

“You’ve only looked at the first receipt,” he says, and she moves the first one to the side.

The second is for a fitting session at some atelier she hasn’t heard of, but Jaime adds quickly that it’s this guy fresh out of fashion school who has just opened near his apartment and he’s _really_ good and he’s also fairly efficient and _could_ make her a proper dress that _would_ fit her in two days tops.

The third receipt is — shit.

 _Shit_.

He booked them dinner for two. At Hélène Darroze’s. On her birthday. She’s halfway sure she’s hyperventilating.

“And that would be —” She starts, feeling like she’ll faint before this conversation is over.

“Eight PM. The salon is in the morning and Theon assured me that if we went for the fitting today he’d have the dress ready by five PM. He also said he’d worry about the rest of the get-up. But really, we don’t have to do it. If you want to stay in and watch Netflix I’m down with it. But I just — figured that if you _really_ wanted it, then why the hell not? But I know shit about how _that_ is supposed to work, so I figured I’d just call in higher powers. Again, you can say no, it’s _fine_. I should have probably asked you —”

“You did this _while not thinking_?” She asks instead, feeling like she might burst into tears.

“Yeah,” he replies, sounding half-sheepish. “Sorry. But I just, I hated to hear you saying _that_ , you know? And maybe the princess Disney dress was a bad fit on you, but _not_ all of them have to be. Again, if it’s too much —”

Thing is: it kind of _is_. The idea of even walking into _any_ of those places the way she is now, never mind _wearing feminine things_ , is enough to make her faint. But it’s obvious that he’s entirely sincere here, and that he really did it because he wanted to do something nice for her, and it’s been two months and he still was bothered by that speech, and —

Fuck that. Even if she still looks hideous, at least she’ll have treated herself, right?

She wipes wetness from her eyes. “No,” she says, “no. It’s fine. We can go for the fit, I guess.”

He _immediately_ goes from halfway worried to smug all over again, slapping her back and holding a hand out. “Good. Then what are we waiting for?”

— —

Theon Greyjoy is definitely _not_ the kind of intimidating person that she had always imagined when thinking of getting fit clothing and discarding the thought a moment later. He’s two years older than her at most, for that matter. He doesn’t blink when he sees her and takes her measures, muttering all over about knowing what might compliment her shoulders and whatnot, and after he’s done, he writes everything down in a notebook, frowning.

“Okay,” he says, “so you need dress and shoes and possibly a jacket or something to cover your shoulders by Friday afternoon. Great, doable. Now, you said you wanted it pink?”

“If you think another color would look better —” She starts, suddenly thinking back on it.

“Absolutely _not_ ,” he says, “it was just to make sure. Hm. Do you want to have a pick or should I —”

“No, you do it,” Brienne immediately tells him. “Just, not… you know. Pastel. Salmon. That shade that goes with princess dresses and the likes.”

“Nah,” Theon shakes his head, “ _that_ wouldn’t be your color. But there’s definitely a couple shades of cherry that would be. Anyway, I’ve got everything I need. Be back at five PM on Friday, it’s going to be ready. And stop looking that strung-up, I’ve never sewn a dress that people didn’t like.” He winks at her before he disappears in the back of the shop.

She maybe is holding to Jaime’s hand way too tight as they leave the place. He says nothing, though.

— —

Two days later, she feels like hyperventilating the moment she walks with him into Martell’s salon — fuck, everything is shiny and clean and in a warm, nice orange color, and she feels horribly underdressed and out of place with her torn jeans and leather jacket that completely covers her frame, but the girls at the reception don’t bat an eyelid as they take the jacket and bring her to the main room. Jaime says he’ll wait outside with a knowing grin and she walks to her destiny.

Then she finds out that she’s getting Oberyn himself to look at her hair and she feels like she really will fucking faint.

To his credit, he doesn’t bat an eyelid as he tells her to sit down for washing.

“Brienne, right?” He asks, sounding like they’ve known each other for centuries. For running such an _exclusive_ place, he does feel remarkably down to earth.

“Yes,” she croaks as she leans her head back and he starts washing her hair.

“Hm,” he says, feeling the consistency. “How about you tell me what it is that you want with your hair today?”

She swallows. “I — never liked how it feels. It’s… too dry, I guess? I don’t know, it feels like straw, but I also never wanted to cut it short because — being taken for a guy all the time was enough without it, I guess.”

“So, you _don’t_ want it short?”

“No,” she says at once. “I mean, unless you think —”

“Please, far from me to go against the client’s wishes. Also, I can see your problem, but it’s nothing that won’t be fixed with some treatment. So, you want it long and I suppose… better styled?”

“Yes,” she says, “but… it doesn’t even stick in braids,” she admits. “I never tried to do it. You can do whatever seems good to you,” she tells him.

“A nice compromise,” he grins. “All right.” He keeps on washing it — he’s already put more products on it than she ever bothered in her entire life. “Since your boyfriend got the full on treatment, my wife is going to show up for the make-up later, but for the next hour and a half we can just worry about the hair.”

She nods, and then she realizes something. “Uhm,” she says, “not to be, you know, nosy, but… do you happen to have a relative named Arianne?” He has similar eyes and skin tone, and his nose is maybe similar, too, but she couldn’t swear on it.

“Sure,” he says, “she’s my niece. Why?”

Brienne goes immediately red in the face. “Uh, what if I say she hit on me once?”

Oberyn laughs openly at that, washing shampoo from her hair again. “I don’t have to disinherit her, then,” he says.

What did he just —

Brienne thinks she’s never gone redder in the face in her life.

But at least he seems to find it amusing, so she’ll just avoid thinking about how he just implied that Arianne had _good taste for hitting on her_ and just — see what he comes up with.

He _does_ trim the endings a bit, but nothing tragic. He also leaves her for half an hour in some kind of mask that’s supposed to make the hair look less dry — she reads one of the newspapers while she waits and she avoids looking at her reflection studiously.

When he comes back and washes her hair again, she can _feel_ that it’s different, even if she couldn’t say how. She looks down at her hands as he styles and dries it, his hands quick and efficient, and she can already feel that it’s fluffier and softer, but she just can’t dare look at herself.

“Do you leave me full leeway when it comes to how it should be styled?” He asks, sounding more amused than else.

“Sure,” she says, “you’re the professional.”

She sees him grab a hair curler from the corner of her vision.

She doesn’t think it’s going to work, her hair _never_ is anything other than straight, but if he wants to try, well, she won’t stop him.

Half an hour later, he turns it off.

“I think you can look,” he says, sounding like he _gets_ why she hasn’t looked at the mirror until now.

She breathes in, opens her eyes, and —

Oh.

Whatever treatment he put on her hair, it _worked_ — it’s always the same blonde, but it looks healthier, and _shinier_ , and it’s definitely softer now, and okay, maybe she _could_ have invested in that mask if it meant it would stop looking like dry straw at any other moment.

But — it’s not just _that_. It’s that now that it feels silky and it’s not trapped in whatever bun she put it in… it’s actually _rather_ long, and he curled it so that it falls on her shoulders in soft, neat waves.

She has to stop herself from putting a hand in front of her mouth.

“I — wow,” she blurts, her fingers shaking. “I — it’s never looked this good, I think,” she goes on, realizing that it actually doesn’t look _bad_ on her, nor like someone copy-pasted a nice haircut on a face that doesn’t flatter it.

“I’m known for being the _professional_ ,” Oberyn winks. “So, ready for part two?”

She’s definitely readier for it than she’d though she could be an hour ago.

— —

Ellaria is about the same as her husband when it comes to _not_ making you feel like you’re in the wrong place, which Brienne is _mighty_ thankful for.

“All right,” she says, sitting next to her. “I imagine you _don’t_ do make-up often, do you?”

“Not — not really.”

“Never too late to start,” she says. “From what I see you do have good skin care,” she says, “so I’ll just clean it real quick.” She starts doing it, then asks her what is the occasion.

“Uhm,” she says, “birthday dinner. In the exclusive place, I guess.”

“All right. And what color would you be wearing?”

“Uh, pink,” she blurts. “A shade that’d be _flattering_ , I guess. He said some kind of cherry. I’ll get it later, it was fitted, but —”

“Why would you _guess_?”

“I don’t know, I just never thought it was _my_ color, but —”

“Nonsense, it just takes picking the right shade. Well, given your skin tone and eyes and all, cherry would look great on you. Entirely doable.”

A moment later, she’s produced a _sensed_ amount of products. Less than Brienne had feared. She explains her how to moisturize the skin, she absolutely forbids her to cover the freckles because it would just require an insane amount of concealer that would only look bad on her and there’s no reason to actually do _that_ , then she gives her a few pointers on how to use eye shadow and maybe a light pencil or eyeliner here and there. Brienne had no clue that you’d use _different_ pencils for eyebrows and lips, but _never mind that_. She forces herself to keep her eyes open because she _needs_ to see how she does it in the remote case she wants to do it again for herself.

By the time Ellaria is done, her skin looks slightly more luminous, her eyes are shadowed in a warm shade of pink that blends with her skin, barely tinged with some extra gold that _does_ make her eyes stand along with the dark gray pencil and a touch of mascara, and… it actually looks _good_ , not like she’s trying and it’s a failed attempt.

She tries to _not_ burst out crying just because she’d ruin it.

Then Ellaria gives her a bag with _all_ the make-up she used on her, it comes with the treatment, plus a liquid lipstick that she assures her only goes away with the solvent that comes with it in the bag. “I can assure you,” she whispers, winking at her, “if after dinner you want to have some fun times with your boyfriend, it _doesn’t_ go away.”

Brienne blushes so red she could burst as she thanks her profusely and leaves the room with the bag in her hands, feeling like she really will fucking faint the moment she steps on the car.

Jaime is looking at his phone when she walks out —

And _openly_ whistles the moment she does.

“What’s that?” She says, still feeling like she’s going to wake up from this in a moment.

“Holy _shit_ ,” he says, “you look great. I mean, you _always_ look great anyway, but —”

“Don’t worry,” she says, “you can _absolutely_ say that. Wow. I didn’t think I could, but —”

“Stop right there,” he says, “told you that you just had to go to the right place didn’t you?”

Well, yeah.

He _did_ , after all.

— —

That afternoon, when she goes to get the dress, she’s this close to hyperventilating again — okay, hair and make-up went over well, but what if _this_ is a bust and it ruins the entire thing? Fuck, she could have settled and gotten it in blue, but some part of her really _did_ want to get it pink —

“There you are,” Theon says as she and Jaime walk in — they’re supposed to go to the restaurant just after, which means that _he_ has dressed up before leaving the house and he looks breathtaking in his green silk shirt and charcoal suit, and she just hopes that she doesn’t end up looking hideous just because she couldn’t stick to the one color she knows looks good on her. “Woah, that’s some great hair over there.”

“Thanks,” she mumbles.

“Well, I think _he_ should wait here for the surprise effect, _you_ can come with me.”

“Sure,” Jaime says, “have fun!”

 _As if_. She follows Theon inside the fitting room.

“So,” he says, “I think this won’t need last second adjustments, but we’ll see in a moment. Here you go.” He opens a drawer and produces the infamous dress.

Brienne stares at it for a moment — it’s _not_ what she had imagined whatsoever, but… it looks _nice_. It’s all soft silk, she can feel at the touch that just the material would have cost an eye. It’s also a dark, warm shade of cherry pink, which is _definitely_ as far from the baby princess dress shade she had feared, and — the waist is slightly stretched, and it has frills all over the short sleeves and under the skirt, but not _overtly_ so.

“Try it on,” Theon says, winking, and leaves her in the fitting room.

She swallows and gets out of her old clothes, quickly putting it over her poor excuse for a bra and plain black undwerwear, and then gathers the force of will to look at herself in the mirror.

And for a moment, she feels like she’s been punched in the gut in the _good_ way.

The stretchy waist _does_ make it seem like she actually has curves there, but the skirt is also large and flowy enough, stopping just below the knee, enough that it looks _natural_. It leaves all of her lower legs bare , showing them off, and for a moment she’s glad that she never had much leg hair and what she has is pale blonde, so it actually doesn’t show that much. But the best part of it is that the half-sleeves are cut in a way that makes her shoulders look smaller, while the slight V-neck makes her meager A cup look at least a size larger without the dress being stuck to her frame.

“Can I come in?” Theon asks.

“Oh, yes,” she says, still in a daze.

“Huh,” he says, coming in, “see, I don’t have to adjust anything. Does it feel good?”

“Yeah,” she says, “it… feels perfect, thank you,” she whispers, turning over. It falls perfectly over her back, too.

“Good,” he says, “because we aren’t done. Now, I _think_ you can do with a belt,” he says, whipping out a soft one that he draws around her waist, tying it with a bow loosely enough that it covers the elastic but doesn’t pinch too much. “Then, you have to pick the shoes. Oh, your guy said that he doesn’t mind whichever pair.”

“You asked _him_?”

“Well, I wasn’t going to, then he said to tell you that because a pair has heels and he doesn’t want you to pick the flats on account of him.”

Brienne goes red as Theon produces a pair of flats the same shade as the dress and a pair of sandals with a slight flat heel that would give her a few centimeters.

Her first instinct is going for the flats because like _hell_ she ever assumed she’d be so suicidal to wear heels, but…

 _But_.

“I’ll try the heels,” she says, feeling like she might faint.

“Good choice,” Theon says, “they’ll show off the legs.”

She puts them on. Shit, the _do_ show them off indeed, and she almost can’t recognize the person staring at her from the other side of the mirror.

“Wait, last thing,” Theon says, and produces from a drawer a taffeta shawl in a slightly lighter shade of that same pink, drawing it over her shoulders and arms, in such a way that it hides _how_ thick exactly her upper arms are.

When she looks at herself again… _well._ She still doesn’t look _pretty_ , she supposes, and nothing hides that her nose was broken twice, but she’s never looked this _good_ in her entire life, and her first instinct isn’t thinking that she looks ridiculous and she should just go back to her jeans and leather jacket. For that matter… she doesn’t look bad _dressed like this_ , and she can’t believe she’s wearing something pink _and_ she doesn’t want to smash the damned mirror.

“Hey,” Theon asks, “you all right?”

“Yes,” she says immediately. “It just — I wasn’t expecting it, I guess.”

“What, to look nice if you wear stuff that’s actually tailored to you and not bought in the men’s section? Newsflash, everyone can look nice if they wear clothes that _fit_ them.” He winks at her, taking back the flats. “Also, just so you know, _your_ guy out there came in saying that he wanted the full service but also that he just wanted you to see what _he_ sees regardless when he looks at you, so maybe you’d want to consider that your looks aren’t that bad in themselves.”

“Did he,” she says. “Good — good to know. And thank you, I know it was short notice —”

“Please, I got paid twice the usual. If he ever wants to tailor you some clothes, I’m _absolutely_ game for it. Have fun and enjoy your romantic dinner,” he says, ushering her out of the changing room after bagging her old clothes. She swallows and gets out of the fitting room and into the shop’s entrance, where Jaime was checking his phone.

He closes it, looks up at her and — Brienne never thought _she_ would be at the receiving end of one of those romance movie stares where the guy realizes he’s into the girl after she’s done the magic makeover, but apparently _this_ is the day, even if she supposes Jaime realized that before now.

“You know what,” he says, “best way I ever spent my money in my entire life.”

She snorts, moving closer. “Well, I won’t be the one complaining. I mean, I — I can’t believe that for once I’m not looking —”

“ _That_ wasn’t what I meant, though,” he smirks slightly, looking up at her as his fingers tangle with hers. “I mean, you look pretty damn great and that shade of pink is definitely your fucking color, but I’m not glad I spent money so you could get in touch with your feminine side or whatever it is people call it these days, I’m glad I spent it because you’re — shit, you _know_ you’re glowing?”

“… Am I?”

“Pretty much. Not as much as when I frenched you in front of the entire cafeteria, but _almost_ , and it’s a damn good look on you, so see to wear it more often. With make-up or not, it’s not like you _have_ to do it. But — it was just to make the point that you _could_ and you’d look fucking amazing regardless. Got it?”

She’s _not_ going to cry and ruin that make-up. “Got it,” she says. “By the way, Ellaria, uh, _did_ give me some lipstick this morning, but said to put it on before going to the restaurant because it would stick through just about anything.”

“Interesting. Does that mean —”

“If there’s a _third_ part to my birthday present that implies the two of us getting naked, I’d only be glad to try out if she was right or not.”

“That,” he grins, “is _absolutely_ the best plan I’ve heard today. So,” he holds out his arm, “shall we? We have a reservation so we can show each other off in half an hour.”

She nods, feeling like her heart might burst.

“Sure,” she says, linking her arm through his. “Can’t wait.”

And thing is, a month ago the idea of going to some kind of exclusive fancy French restaurant with _him_ dressed like _this_ would have made her hide in a panic, but now… now, she feels like she _wouldn’t_ fit so badly, and she looked into the mirror and actually didn’t hate what stared back at her, and the way he’s looking at her is the same people always stared at all the pretty, beautiful girls that she never thought she could be like, and —

She _really_ can’t wait, and she means it, and she has a feeling that while she might _not_ want to actually wear make-up regularly now she _could_ do it from time to time without feeling like a joke, and she’s _definitely_ going to wear that dress because fuck it but it feels _great_ and she loves the look.

“You know,” she said, “I haven’t worn anything like this in… ten years. You know that _now_ I might want to catch up with lost time?”

“If you want to go like that to your high school reunion and you don’t bring me with you, I’ll be _very_ fucking disappointed,” he says, and she laughs and thinks, _I kind of would love to_.

Later, when they’re sitting at the table with a couple candles in between them, his foot hooked around her naked ankle throughout the whole dinner, she decides that if _this_ is what it means indulging in her feminine side without feeling like she’ll have to apologize for it every damned other moment or without thinking that such a thing was forbidden for her same as actually being with someone like him…

Well.

She thinks she might really, _really_ grow to love it, with time.

With time.

For now, she’ll settle for enjoying every second of the evening and show him later that she appreciated his birthday gift.

And she’s _definitely_ going to make sure he knows exactly how much.

 

End.


End file.
